Giving her Tuesday afternoon audience a rare glimpse into the dangerous life of a war correspondent, Time Magazine journalist Vivienne Walt reflected on her insider experiences in Iraq and the way foreign press coverage has changed since Sept. 11.
Indeed, Walt experienced first-hand the "deepening sense of threat and violence" in Iraq, where 63 journalists have been killed since March 2003, and numerous more have been kidnapped and threatened with death. She related some of her most significant and stirring memories from her time in Iraq, including events such as U.S. soldiers accidentally opening fire on poorly-marked Iraqi police recruits.
Walt also described in vivid detail the seven hours she spent on night patrol with the "Outlaws," a U.S. platoon in charge of the fiercely pro-Saddam Hussein town of Abu Ghraib. The chaotic shift consisted of middle-of-the-night raids on citizens' houses, during which soldiers hauled people out of bed, bashed through locks, rifled through people's belongings and forced men into lines, taking digital pictures of them on the slim chance that one might be wanted for a crime.
The night force's platoon leader allegedly expressed disgust and frustration with the task, which he felt only alienated the people they were seeking to help. According to Walt, he said that the war was completely unnecessary in the first place, and he also expressed concern for the poor people in Iraq who, he felt, needed the military's help.
The platoon later revealed that the Kalashnikov rifles the soldiers had confiscated from the families were needed for new police recruits, and taking the weapons was one way of meeting their weapons quota.
Characteristically, Walt humanized the night's senseless violence by focusing on the terrified young boy who witnessed one raid as he lay clutched in his mother's arms. On a projector screen in the Rockefeller Center, she showed a photograph of the boy and his mother, with an American soldier's camouflaged leg and torso taking up nearly half the photo.
"Is he going to hate Americans?" she wondered aloud.
According to Walt, foreign coverage gained greater importance with the tragedy of Sept. 11. Since the fall of the twin towers, she found that foreigners repeatedly -- and often angrily -- mistook American journalists for direct representatives of the American government, or more specifically, the American military.
"What we write and what we photograph has an important impact around the world in a way it never has before," Walt said. Not only did foreign journalism gain greater notice abroad, but Walt also found that significant national figures, such as powerful sheiks, read her articles and "googled" her before she even arrived in their country. Increasingly, foreigners have become more aware of American correspondents and the impact media coverage exerts within countries such as Iraq.
Walt recalled an article she recently wrote about family-imposed honor killings that were causing Iraqi women to flee for their lives. Her expos on the topic earned her the ire of local sheiks and incited controversy within Baghdad mosques, to the point that her friends in-country advised her to leave Iraq for her own safety.
Yet despite personal dangers, Walt said she believes human-centered coverage is important to introduce the public to the more human side of issues of war and foreign conflict.
A foreign correspondent with 25 years of front-line experience behind her, Walt said humanizing foreign coverage is important in shaping foreign policy as well as showing the effects of war on people.
"There's no substitute for being out there on the front lines and hearing people's stories," Walt said.
