The Telegraph - 06 July 2012
What makes journalists rush into danger? What do they get out of risking their lives to cover a war? And how do they justify the risks they take to their families? “I hate danger but I’m quite fearless,” says Asne Seierstad, journalist and author of The Bookseller of Kabul.
“I have ice cold blood,” she explains. “That would be because you are Norwegian,” comes the riposte from Jon Lee Anderson, the New Yorker veteran who with novelist Robin Yassin-Kassab makes up the panel on reporting wars that I chaired on the second day of the Telegraph Hay Festival Beirut.
Adrenaline plays a part, but only to keep them alive by teaching them the mistakes to avoid, like not taking a road with no civilians (a bad sign). Curiosity motivates them, and a hunch that they are not being told the truth about the conflict in question, be it Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or now Syria. But above all they have a common desire to bear witness and bring us what they see. In Iraq Anderson helped a boy whose arms had been blown off and decided deliberately to describe in searing detail the violence that hit him and his family.
“I wanted whoever read it to be as moved and grief stricken as I was.” Covering Iraq became for him a compulsion, even at the height of the violence that made it immeasurably dangerous for journalists. How did he justify it to his family? “My family came second.” Did he ask them? “I told them. They accepted it.”
Beirut is buzzing despite the mist of tension seeping over from Syria.
It’s the festival season, and anyone who hasn’t escaped to Paris or the Cote d’Azur is having fun watching the stars descending on Lebanon for concerts in Beirut and beyond. B.B. King sold out in Byblos, Charles Aznavour and Chris De Burgh are headlining in Jounieh. And Enrique Iglesias played to a packed audience on the harbour here this week.
Locals keep an eye on all sorts of small indicators to tell them what the security situation is doing. No celebrity cancellations is a good sign.
Full report at The Telegraph
Beirut is buzzing despite the mist of tension seeping over from Syria.
It’s the festival season, and anyone who hasn’t escaped to Paris or the Cote d’Azur is having fun watching the stars descending on Lebanon for concerts in Beirut and beyond. B.B. King sold out in Byblos, Charles Aznavour and Chris De Burgh are headlining in Jounieh. And Enrique Iglesias played to a packed audience on the harbour here this week.
Locals keep an eye on all sorts of small indicators to tell them what the security situation is doing. No celebrity cancellations is a good sign.
Full report at The Telegraph
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