The shortcomings of war reporting

There is a problem with the international reporting of major stories, especially war reporting. A big story breaks. The leading broadcasters and newspapers want to send in their top people. Crews from the top networks arrive with open pocketbooks in search of stories with strong footage. It is that requirement for compelling pictures that initiates a sad distortion of what is actually going on. The current Iraqi-Kurdish attack on Mosul is a reminder of the challenges and shortcomings of the international media. Foreign TV crews have been embedded with Iraqi army units, much as they were when the US-led coalition overthrew Saddam Hussain in 2003. At present these journalists are traveling in hard-skinned vehicles driven by probably long-suffering members of the Iraqi army. However, with the best will in the world, the reinforced glass observation slits do not make for very good camera shots, not least because they quickly become dust-covered and crack into spider’s webs when struck by a bullet. So the best that TV reporters can do is crouch in the bottom of the vehicle and speak to camera while bullets ping off the armored plate. There have been a series of such broadcasts. Now while they are not lacking in drama and certainly make exciting viewing for TV audiences, the problem is that this is not really news about the assault on Mosul. All battles sound like this from inside an armored vehicle. So this is actually news about the reporter. The journalist on camera under fire becomes the story. The reality of the battle outside is entirely lost. Now it could be argued that news media can never hope to cover everything that happens in war. The Duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo, said that a battle was very much like a ball; you could never know everything that had happened there. But the problem is that whatever footage is served up by the networks is assumed to be from the center of the battle when it is patently not. Moreover, most of the journalists sent in to cover these major stories often know little more about their destinations than what they read on their flight over. Whether broadcast or print, these reporters could not function without the support of local fixers, whose crucial existence they actually only ever rarely acknowledge. Meanwhile, for newspaper journalists interviewing through their interpreter fighters who will never see the stories written about them, the temptation to embroider quotes or events witnessed can be intense when foreign editors back home are demanding “good, strong stories”. Unfortunately for one celebrated reporter last year, his Syrian fixer did read in fact what he had written, was infuriated by the untruths and promptly abandoned him well inside the Syrian border with Turkey. None of this is to say that the international effort to cover the Mosul attack is wrong. But by seeking to present the conflict in easily digestible sound bites, it merely stokes simplistic views back home. It tells a story, but not THE story. The brutal reality of every battle is all too often missed. It is not simply the dead, the wounded, the refugees, the destruction; it is also the fear and confusion, the bravery and the cowardice and the smell of explosives and putrefaction. Around the world, those who see the war reporting from Mosul or anywhere else need to appreciate its inevitable limitations.