RSS Feed
February 22nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the
Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint
strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for
hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping
for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children.
Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without
prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is
worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?
Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face
difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price. Tonight we honour
the 49 journalists and support staff who were killed bringing the news to
our shores. We also remember journalists around the world who have been
wounded, maimed or kidnapped and held hostage for months. It has never been
more dangerous to be a war correspondent, because the journalist in the
combat zone has become a prime target.
I lost my eye in an ambush in the Sri Lankan civil war. I had gone to the
northern Tamil area from which journalists were banned and found an
unreported humanitarian disaster. As I was smuggled back across the internal
border, a soldier launched a grenade at me and the shrapnel sliced into my
face and chest. He knew what he was doing.
Just last week, I had a coffee in Afghanistan with a photographer friend,
Joao Silva. We talked about the terror one feels and must contain when
patrolling on an embed with the armed forces through fields and villages in
Afghanistan … putting one foot in front of the other, steeling yourself
each step for the blast. The expectation of that blast is the stuff of
nightmares. Two days after our meeting Joao stepped on a mine and lost both
legs at the knee.
Many of you here must have asked yourselves, or be asking yourselves now,
is it worth the cost in lives, heartbreak, loss? Can we really make a
difference?
I faced that question when I was injured. In fact one paper ran a headline
saying, has Marie Colvin gone too far this time? My answer then, and now,
was that it is worth it.
Today in this church are friends, colleagues and families who know exactly
what I am talking about, and bear the cost of those experiences, as do their
families and loved ones.
Today we must also remember how important it is that news organisations
continue to invest in sending us out at great cost, both financial and
emotional, to cover stories.
We go to remote war zones to report what is happening. The public have a
right to know what our government, and our armed forces, are doing in our
name. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first
rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the
horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.
The history of our profession is one to be proud of. The first war
correspondent in the modern era was William Howard Russell of The Times, who
was sent to cover the Crimean conflict when a British-led coalition fought
an invading Russian army.
Billy Russell, as the troops called him, created a firestorm of public
indignation back home by revealing inadequate equipment, scandalous
treatment of the wounded, especially when they were repatriated – does this
sound familiar? – and an incompetent high command that led to the folly of
the Charge of the Light Brigade. It was a breakthrough in war reporting.
Until then, wars were reported by junior officers who sent back dispatches
to newspapers. Billy Russell went to war with an open mind, a telescope, a
notebook and a bottle of brandy. I first went to war with a typewriter, and
learned to tap out a telex tape. It could take days to get from the front to
a telephone or telex machine.
War reporting has changed greatly in just the last few years. Now we go to
war with a satellite phone, laptop, video camera and a flak jacket. I point
my satellite phone to South Southwest in Afghanistan, press a button and I
have filed.
In an age of 24/7 rolling news, blogs and twitters, we are on constant call
wherever we are. But war reporting is still essentially the same – someone
has to go there and see what is happening. You can’t get that information
without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are
shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to
believe that enough people be they government, military or the man on the
street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or
the TV screen.
We do have that faith because we believe we do make a difference.
And we could not make that difference – or begin to do our job – without
the fixers, drivers, and translators, who face the same risks and die in
appalling numbers. Today we honour them as much as the front line
journalists who have died in pursuit of the truth. They have kept the faith
as we who remain must continue to do.”
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
