Middle East Correspondent Mitch Potter writes for the Toronto Star. In an e-mail Q&A Potter answered questions about what it takes to be a good journalist under tough circumstances. Potter covers all major conflicts in the Middle East.
Poynter Online: What impact is all of the destruction and death having on you and fellow journalists?
Potter: As writers, I think we all try to keep our emotional antennae above water and transmitting though a breaking-news crisis. My biggest worry is that my nerves will begin to deaden somewhere along the way, that the personal baggage I accumulate along the way will eventually sink my ability to show what I see.
There’s also the junkie factor we’ve all encountered in ourselves or others — perverse, uncontrollable need to be at the next big mess. Like the Vietnam vets who re-enlisted.
I don’t have this one too bad as yet. I’m actually trying to be judicious about it all, to try and somehow regulate images I take in. Suicide bombs in Israel, for example, rarely vary when it comes to grotesque imagery. After covering so many [suicide bombings], I prefer to take in a few minutes rather than a few hours, and instead get the human story from the hospital or family home. Limit the visuals that probably become fodder for nightmares later.
How are you approaching survivors? And do you feel awkward about approaching people who have just lost loved ones?
Most of the victims I encounter are man-made victims of conflict, rather than natural disaster. So the anguish is usually accompanied by outrage.
I approach the anger first, because it wants to be heard and thus is most approachable. In the Arab world, especially, I find that patience is the best journalistic virtue. Let the anger vent good and long, and ever so slowly — shwaya, shwaya, they say in Arabic — the fuller depth of the story will reveal itself.
What is one experience you have had so far either in your reporting, or just being over there that will stay with you?
I interviewed a Palestinian father in Gaza last year whose unarmed son was shot in the back, a story corroborated by two UN field workers who witnessed it all from inside their armoured car. The boy survived, by the way, treated in an Israeli hospital, in fact.
But what has stayed with me is that unlike so many we meet, whether in Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq or (your conflict here), this man rose above it all. He refused to succumb to vengeance, and instead spoke eloquently, passionately for reconcilation, forgiveness, coexistence with Israel. Clone him. Clone him now.
Are you worried about your own health and safety?
I only know of a handful of reporters who aren’t/weren’t worried about surviving conflict reporting. Some are famous. Some are dead.
I’d say my red-lines are comparable to most: we weigh risk calculations against the importance of the story and decide accordingly. Although in the past few years, it should be noted, more and more news organizations have begun imposing decisions from home base on whether or not a journalist should proceed into a specific scenario, regardless of what the person on the ground advises.
I’ve been seven times to Iraq, and do not relish the eighth, given that it is now largely unreportable for Westerners, save for those few operations with the resources to hire small armies of Iraqi stringers. Newday’s Matt McAllester described Baghdad recently as “outlandishly dangerous. Don’t go.”
Ironically, each time I go Baghdad turns out not to be as daunting as advertised. Still, how does one caculate the risk of kidnapping?
Is there anything you would like to add?
A small word of advice to anyone en route to war or natural disaster with pen in hand: Ask not what you can take from the story, but what you can bring to it.
If you are covering a crisis, or know someone who is, and would like to submit a personal account for posting on this blog, please contact me at ecarr@poynter.org. Please include your name, affiliation, title, and geographic location.
