This post was written by Hatchet Reporter Reid Davenport
Despite the many dangers they face every day, four war reporters said there is no substitute for covering a war from the battlefield at the Kalb Report Monday night at the National Press Club.
Four of the nation’s top war correspondents, Laura King of the Los Angeles Times, Cami McCormick of CBS News, Martha Raddatz of ABC News and Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post discussed their experiences as embedded journalists during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with legendary journalist Marvin Kalb.
“With all the modern armaments we have, all the technology, there isn’t much difference between what the marines I was with were doing and what was going on in World War II,” said Chandrasekaran, senior correspondent and associate editor of the Washington Post. “Rifles in hand, walking through fields, trying to dodge enemy fire, taking cover in ditches.”
Chandrasekaran said that the District is a “one-issue town” – currently focused on healthcare – and despite the fact that there are more than 250,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the issue is not on politicians’ radar. Chandrasekaran said that the war in Afghanistan might come into focus when the U.S. military strategy is reevaluated.
Enemy fire or not, Chandrasekaran said he learned more about the conflict in one day embedded in Afghanistan than he would have in a month in D.C.
“You can’t write about the impact of the president’s decision to commit 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan,” Chandrasekaran said. “Actually go there and walk shoulder to shoulder with them.”
McCormick – a CBS news correspondent who is recovering from injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device (IED) hit the vehicle transporting her in Iraq last August – said she would still go back to Iraq or Afghanistan.
“I’d like to go back, go back to a country that’s not at war,” McCormick said.
McCormick said what would draw her back is the display of humanity at a time when it feels like “hell on earth.”
Raddatz, senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News, said she wants to go back for “every part: all the courage, all the fear, all of that together, and doing the best job possible.”
“I’m proud that the press continued to report over there,” Raddatz said. “We could ask questions to the administration, to generals about what was really going on.”
Raddatz suggested that students pursuing a career as a reporter should not only study journalism, but also subjects such as history and politics to provide context to their reporting.
“I do not want the next generation of reporters to be just tweeting all day,” Raddatz said. “They do have to have context.”
Laura King, foreign affairs correspondent for the LA Times and a James Clark Welling presidential fellow at GW, lived in Kabul, Afghanistan.
“I had the opportunity to profile some Afghan women and every one of them, from those forced into marriage at a very young age to women who had seen years and years and years of conflict, all of them had been touched by the reverberations of the fighting and the conflict,” King said. “And just seeing how all of them tried to find ways around the violence, it was very inspirational to me.”
Sophomore Emily D’Antonio said the event was eye-opening.
“It was a fascinating report,” D’Antonio said. “It gave a lot of good inside perspective onto war that I probably wouldn’t have ever understood before. And it made it also a lot more entertaining than reading 10, 20 articles on it.”
“I think the lack of detailed stories made it not as candid, but at the same time I did feel a lot of emotion,” D’Antonio said.
