By Douglas Jehl
Most of us who have spent our careers around foreign news have found ways to cope with the dangers of covering conflicts.
It will be fine, we tell ourselves. No one really wants to target a journalist.
But all that can be punctured with the ring of a telephone. Your correspondent has been detained, we hear. Your photographer has collapsed. Your reporter is missing.
In the deadly year that was 2014, we at the Washington Post were among the news organizations that received those kinds of calls. In July, via a scratchy mobile phone connection, came news that Jason Rezaian, the Post’s Tehran correspondent, had been detained by the Iranian authorities. In December, a satellite-phone delivered word that photographer Michel du Cille had fallen unconscious on an arduous hike in a remote location while covering Ebola in Liberia.
Michel, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, died before reaching a hospital. Jason, as of this writing, remained in Iranian custody after eight months without access to a lawyer and without any public indication of the charges against him. Another reporter, Austin Tice, a freelancer whose work appeared in the Post and McClatchy Newspapers, remains unaccounted for after being abducted in Syria in August 2012. The blow to their families has been unfathomable.
Other journalists and other news organizations have been even more horribly cursed.
In many ways, 2014 was a year in which the world seemed to ignite. All at once, it sometimes seemed, came war in Ukraine and Gaza, renewed chaos in Afghanistan, the march of Islamic State extremists in Iraq, Syria and beyond, and the awful toll of instability and disease in West Africa. Not counting du Cille, more than 60 journalists were killed in the line of duty, including four from The Associated Press.
Perhaps most indelibly, the dead included American freelance journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, beheaded so brutally by their extremist captors in Syria in videotaped productions broadcast on social media.
Of course, journalists have never been immune from risk – even though those of us who have worked as foreign correspondents sometimes hoped that a press card or a windshield placard proclaiming “media’’ might spare us from a missile strike or from captors wielding AK-47s.
But there was a time, not so long ago, when it did seem possible to believe that the essential role that news organizations played as a messenger might afford at least some protection; even the bad guys need us, we would tell ourselves.
It is now undeniable that this old calculus does not always apply. Extremist groups such as Islamic State clearly see public-relations benefit, not cost, in killing journalists, not just in Syria but elsewhere, as in this year’s attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Among governments, Egypt, with its conviction of three Al Jazeera reporters, and Iran, with its detention of Rezaian and dozens of Iranian journalists, do not appear to have been swayed by the concern about possible blowback.
As the Post’s foreign editor, I see my job as helping readers make sense of what is most consequential around the world. The size of our foreign staff (which now numbers 20 correspondents in 15 bureaus) attests to our commitment to up-close, first-hand coverage. But the places where the most consequential events were unfolding – Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Gaza – have also become the most dangerous.
No journalist ever wants to limit coverage of a major story. But in practice, the threats facing journalists in parts of Iraq and Syria controlled by the Islamic State mean that a historic narrative there is unfolding without witnesses. At the same time, Iran’s cruel and unconscionable detention of Rezaian has prevented the Post from covering that country at a pivotal time in its history.
As Jason’s boss, I have worked closely with his family and with other senior leaders at the Post, including Frederick J. Ryan Jr., the publisher, to explore every possible channel in seeking Jason’s release. The Post has also supported similar efforts led by the family of Austin Tice.
While the Post’s ethical guidelines prohibit its journalists from engaging in political activities, our executive editor, Martin Baron, advised the newsroom in February that it would be entirely appropriate to advocate for journalistic freedom and for the freedom of our colleague. A number of Post employees have now joined in signing a petition on Change.org calling for Jason’s release.
A valuable initiative led, among others, by press freedom organizations and by David Rohde of Reuters, who spent so many months held captive by the Taliban in Pakistan, has devoted particular attention to drawing up proposed guidelines to ensure that freelance journalists are better trained and equipped before they venture into conflict zones.
We at the Post take seriously our responsibilities to all of those who work for us, and we’re working to sharpen our own practices for correspondents, freelancers, and also for the local reporters, translators, drivers and others on whom we often depend.
There are lessons to be drawn from the toll of the past year – about training, planning, even cybersecurity. The world doesn’t show any sign of getting safer, and being clear-eyed about weighing the risks is the best way to make sure that we can keep telling these stories.
Jehl is Foreign Editor
of the Washington Post.