War Stories

The Culture of Foreign Correspondents

Mark Pedelty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000259308
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What are the influences on war correspondents as they report on news in war-torn countries? Originally published in 1995, Mark Pedelty explores the lives, work and culture of an international press corps. He writes about the reporters who covered El Salvador's civil war. Going beyond those specifics to look at the institutions, practices, myths, and rituals that pattern the work of journalists everywhere. He tells us the stories of war correspondents at work and at play, as they cover the news.

The myth, developed in part from the movies we watch and from CNN, is that war is reported from the front lines. More often, it is reported from the front office as journalists sit around waiting for something "big" to happen. Pedelty looks at the context in which they construct their reports. "Unnamed" diplomats in the US Embassy feed stories to reporters, who are careful not to alienate these crucial sources by adding background information that might be perceived as ideological. Reporters are also constrained by the pens and preferences of editors who work to narrow the focus of news reporting, removing necessary context in the process. By examining how news stories are actually produced, Pedelty highlights the elusiveness of the goal of "objective" journalism. We see how the biases of war correspondents are connected to structures of power, and how these biases affect actual journalistic practices.

Pedelty also explores alternative possibilities for war reporting, including emerging alternative international news services and ways to deepen reporters' understandings of the countries and problems they cover.

Influenced by anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies, and sociology, this book will interest scholars and students in those fields, as well as journalists and anyone who watches, reads or listens to news.

War

and

Identity

1

War Games

Delighting in their distinction as “Those Crazy Guys Who Cover The War” (Herr 1968:188), war correspondents often publish their exploits in boldly entitled autobiographies like War Reporter (Harris 1979), War News (Anson 1989), Means of Escape (Caputo 1991), Trial by Fire (Barnes 1990), and Dangerous Company: Inside the World’s Hottest Trouble Spots with a Pulitzer Prize-Winning War Correspondent (Tuohy 1987). They name their autobiographical essays with equal subtlety, crafting titles like “Hell Sucks” (Herr 1968:70-85) or “News From Hell,” Anna Husarska’s recent New Yorker essay (1992). The back cover blurb on Harris’ War Reporter exemplifies the live-for-the-adventure and die-for-the-truth theme running through each of the aforementioned works (1979):

Looking for the action, he found it. The jungles of Vietnam, the streets of Northern Ireland, the deserts of the Middle East, the Hills of Cyprus.... For the past fifteen years crack Hearst foreign correspondent J.D. Harris has risked his life to bring the news of war to the American People.

The autobiographical texts portray war correspondents’ work as frenetic, occasionally insensate, yet ultimately heroic.

Once past the obligatory self-deprecating statements of the introduction, the focus turns to the reporter’s courage, cunning, and professional conviction. Husarska brags (1992:99):

All those who have reported from here, even the seasoned war correspondents, agree that Sarajevo is the most dangerous assignment they’ve ever had. So it is only natural that nearly every journalist who comes to the former Yugoslavia makes it a point of honor to ‘do’ Sarajevo.

The subtext of Husarska’s essay is that the war correspondent, given her intimate association with the dangerous and important moment, is herself courageous and consequential. Beneath the surface message “War is Hell” lies a claim to cultural status and professional identity, what Herr calls the “haunted, haunting romance” that accompanies the title “war correspondent” (Herr 1968:188). War correspondents live (and sometimes die) to be distinguished from plain correspondents.

The practice of war reporting seems an endless dance with death in the autobiographical texts, a life of close and constant contact with extreme violence. War correspondents live in the trenches, their perilous routine broken only by an occasional late night bar session or red eye flight. There is scant mention of the countless hours spent sitting in press conferences, interviews, taxis, and offices waiting for something “big” to happen. The time consuming act of writing is also ignored.

Popular films like Salvador, Under Fire, The Killing Fields, and The Year of Living Dangerously similarly represent the war correspondent as courageous, fiercely independent, and intensely committed to truth—the classic “lone rebel motif’ (Tetzlaff 1991:28). While such films also contain implicit critiques of journalism, the protagonists fit squarely within the rugged individualist model of the aforementioned autobiographies. As in the autobiographies, film reporters are unencumbered by editorial censorship and other institutional constraints. The pop culture protagonists ply their trade with near lunatic courage.

That self-promoted image is contested, however, by critical voices both within and outside the world of journalism. Many members of the international solidarity movement, for example, promote a very different view of the foreign correspondent.¹ Before beginning my research, I was often told by solidarity workers that SPECA reporters did little more than attend U.S. embassy functions and get drunk in the bar of the Camino Real Hotel. While war correspondents present themselves as rugged individualists, these critics envision them as mindless agents of U.S. foreign policy.

While both positions contain certain truths, neither provides an adequate description of war reporting. Most reporters are neither the die-for-the-truth adventurists they would have us believe, nor the lobotomized barflies of solidarity discourse. The truth is much more complex, and in certain ways, more disturbing. Starting with a description of a typical field excursion, I will offer a third and, I hope, more accurate picture of the war correspondents’ difficult work.

Running with the Pack

On Thursday, April 11 a regional commander of the FMLN, Antonio Cardenal, was ambushed and killed along with thirteen guerrilla soldiers. Cardenal, nom de guerre Jesus Rojas, was the nephew of Nicaragua’s President Violeta Chamorro. Although much is known about the life of this seminarian-turned-guerrilla, the facts surrounding his death remain clouded. The FMLN claimed Cardenal was executed after capture, a standard tiro de gracia (“shot of grace”: bullet in the head). Such executions, although common, violate the Geneva Conventions. Salvadoran Army officials flatly denied the FMLN’s accusation. They claimed Cardenal and his troops were killed in an ambush. We may never know which of the two versions, if either, represents the truth. However, we may have once had the chance.

On Saturday night, April 13, 1991 a group of reporters gathered at the Camino Real Hotel. At first, only I and a stringer named Shawn were present. Shawn was telling me about his latest adventures when Joe, a photographer, walked in, having heard us chatting as he walked by. Joe was trying to drum up support for a trip to Chalatenango, the site of Cardenal’s death. Shawn wanted to go as well. After a few other journalists entered, the group reached critical mass and a consensus was reached: the story merited attention. We would be going to Chalate early the next morning.

As mentioned in the introduction, an FMLN execution of two U.S. advisors made international headlines just a few months before. Most SPECA reporters believed the ambushed guerrillas had received similar treatment, the tiro de gracia. Of the eighteen guerrillas attacked in Chalatenango, thirteen were killed. Not a single Salvadoran Army soldier died in the attack. As one reporter explained, “That just doesn’t happen.” There is rarely such an imbalance in casualties, even after a successful ambush.

According to the FMLN high command, the attack broke a “gentleman’s agreement” between the warring parties. Neither side was to kill the other’s leaders within their respective “retroguard” (controlled territories) during the negotiations. Therefore, the April ambush threatened to destablize the continuing peace negotiations and marked an escalation in the war. Further adding to the potential newsworthiness of the story, the local alternative press reported that two U.S. military advisers had taken part in the ambush.² (It was later confirmed by a SPECA reporter that American advisers were, at the very least, involved in planning the attack. That fact was never reported in the U.S. press, however.)

The event interested the reporters, although most doubted their editors would find similar news appeal in a story merely involving Salvadoran deaths. The doubters fell in line, however, once a few colleagues decided to make the trip. They could not risk getting scooped. As a result, the story was covered by committee, a common practice known as “pack journalism.”

On the positive side, packs function to provide greater protection and allow for more efficient resource sharing (vehicles, fuel, communications equipment). Many stringers would have difficulty affording those expenses if they were not able to share them with others. Several journalists were critical of the pack practice, however, calling the ad hoc coalitions “rat packs,” “gang bangs,” and even, “goat fucks.” Paul compared the pack outings to “camping trips.” (I once accidentally referred to a pack outing as a “picnic,” momentarily upsetting those with me on the excursion.) The critics’ antipathy towards the “pack mentality,” however, did not keep them from participating in pack outings themselves. The risk of getting scooped was too great, even for the most independent-minded journalists.³

Guerrilla Safari

At six o’clock Sunday morning about twenty journalists and I piled into a caravan of four-wheel drive vehicles, heading north. SPECA reporters jokingly referred to these excursions to the conflicted zones as “guerrilla safaris.” We made a brief stop in the town of Guazapa for sweet breads, coffee and the latest word on local military actions around Volcan de Guazapa, a volcano fifteen kilometers north of San Salvador. The volcano was controlled by the FMLN throughout most of the war.

After driving another hour we reached the capital of Chalatenango province, a town by the same name. The ritualized bartering for access began there. The army controlled the town and access to the main roads leading into the mountains. To get to the guerrillas, we had to receive permission from the local military commander. Often, the frustrated young journalists would haggle with the media-savvy Army officers for hours before being allowed to pass or, quite often, forced to turn back.

Such negotiations involved a ritualized exchange of lies. First, the journalists misrepresented their true goals, claiming to be in the area for general reporting purposes. Rarely did they openly state what all parties concerned already understood: that they were there to talk to FMLN leaders. Of course, the military officers knew the reporters’ true destination and purpose. Rather then challenge the imputed goal, however, military officials usually played along, adding their own fictions to the fray with lines like: “I’m sorry, terrorist actions have been very heavy in the area.” Next, reporters would be asked to wait a short period while the guards spoke to their commanding officer via walkie-talkie. The reporters would be sent to town in order to gain permission from the regional commander, even when carrying valid passes signed by the high command in San Salvador. The local commander had only the limits of his imagination to consider when inventing reasons why the reporters could not pass into “his” territory; ad hoc obstructions presented with a smile. The military seemed to genuinely enjoy this aspect of their work.

If the game went well for reporters, they would be detained for hours and later allowed to pass. Factors that influenced the outcome of the ritual included: disposition of the local commander, the ability of the journalist to perform the ritual with competence and confidence, the nature of recent events in the area, and the institutional status of the reporter(s). A New York Times staff correspondent was much more likely to gain access than a Fresno Bee stringer or reporter for The Nation. The staff correspondent, however, was much less likely to make the trip in the first place.

Jerry, a stringer who rode next to me during the Chalatenango “safari,” summarized the press access ritual:

You know that they are lying and they know that you are lying. They know that you know that they are lying. It is a game. The only problem is that it is a game that they can decide to take seriously at any moment.

Jerry became visibly shaken as we drew near the reten (road block).

Even though journalists were, according to law, allowed full access to the countryside at the time, the army collected our press credentials upon arrival in Chalatenango and asked us to wait in a back room of the local barracks. We were served coffee and pastries while a pleasant, corpulent Army Officer arrived to baby-sit our group.

Joe and Michele, photographers for competing wire services, immediately began asking the well-nourished official what he thought about the recent ambush. After receiving vague, off-the-topic responses, the pair started pressing for access to the conflicted zones, using kind and measured tones. “It is too dangerous there today,” said the officer, “It is for your own protection.” “That is part of our work,” explained Joe, “We are paid to take risks.” “Is it the excitement of the work that you like?” asked the military man. He seemed to be genuinely interested in the response, though there was a sense of anger and derision in his voice. Joe did not respond. The truthful answer, however, is an unqualified “yes.”

Trying to recoup lost propaganda points, Joe asked the official about the ambush, “If you can kill so many of the guerrillas this easily, doesn’t that mean that you are really in control of all this territory?” Michele chimed in: “Yes, that was a big blow to the FMLN, right?” The officer grinned, refusing to be baited or swayed by their rather obvious attempts to gain favor. Adriana, another photographer, commented on such tactics: “I have heard journalists say very right-wing things thinking that is what they [the military] want to hear. Such deception is not good.”

Whether “good” or not, “such deception” takes place relatively often. On one occasion, Joe tried to get by a hospital guard by posing as a U.S. official, hoping to gain access to a U.S. citizen being guarded there by the National Police. The tourist had entered El Salvador without a valid visa or the ability to speak Spanish. He was being detained for deportation and panicked. Attempting to escape, he climbed up through a ceiling panel and then came crashing back down on a desk, injuring himself.

Joe was hoping to get an exclusive photo and interview the young man in his hospital room, as were other SPECA reporters. As the first journalist to arrive on the scene, Joe issued the following command to the sentries: “Please inform the Embassy staff that I will be waiting in his room.” Joe was hoping they would assume from his tone and appearance that he actually worked for The Embassy. Neither Joe nor the others’ attempts were successful, however, including a U.S. TV network film crew which tried to sneak in under the guise of a “police video” squad. It was quite an intense game for such a non-issue.

Deceptive press tactics rarely worked during the war. The journalists in question had only been in the country for a few years, whereas the military had been dealing with international press throughout twelve years of war. As usual, the Chalatenango of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A list of Acronyms
• Introduction: Reporting Salvador
• PART ONE: WAR AND IDENTITY
• Part Two: Structure and Practice
• Part Three: Text and Representation
• Part Four: Difference and Domination
• Conclusion: Leaving the Camino
• Epilogue
• Appendix: The Journalists
• Notes
• References
• Index