Customer Reviews

Breaking News: A Stunning and Memorable Account of Reporting from Some of the Most Dangerous Places in the World

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Hanging my boots up last year after my final trip to Afghanistan was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make in my life. It was done at the insistence of my daughter and my knees. I finally had to realize that I could be a liability to those around me in a war zone. With that in mind, I was quite intrigued when friends contacted me and asked if I would read and review Martin Fletcher's book, "Breaking News". Martin was starting his career with the Yom Kipper (October) War of 1973 just as I was ending my Navy Combat Camera days with the very same war. Martin's account of this war is "spot on"! I wish he had written about this many years ago when I got asked to leave a Political Science class in college for telling the professor he didn't know what he was talking about. When the professor asked me how I knew, I replied with the only answer I could give, "because I was there"! Where were you when I needed you, Martin!

"Breaking News" is a MUST READ for anyone interested in international conflicts and what it is like to cover these conflicts as a cameraman and as a broadcast journalist. In his 35 year career, Martin Fletcher has pretty much seen it all, and this book is his very personal account of what life is like in the day to day world of the Foreign Correspondent. Part of what makes this book great is that it does not focus on world leaders, and "their" stories. It focuses on the day to day struggles of the average person caught in the middle of these conflicts. It gives an excellent account of the journalistic integrity of one man working in the trenches of so many conflicts, Martin Fletcher.

I am always reluctant to give too much detail in a book review because I hate to give out "spoilers". Once again, I will just say, "READ THIS BOOK"! Martin takes us on a journey of adventure and personal growth from the October War of 1973 to the Coup in Cyprus just a year later, to the Rhodesian War that gave us what today is known as Zimbabwe. He gives an excellent account of life in Paris for news reporters and takes us to Algiers and Iran for an insider's look at the Hostage Crisis in Tehran. From there he takes us to Afghanistan and covering the Afghan/Soviet War. He gives us a very telling account of life in Israel during the first Gulf War with SCUD missiles falling in Tel Aviv.

I could go on and on about his coverage of the Middle East, Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia and numerous other places of conflict and genocide. But, once again I will simply point out that Martin's book is really about his own personal and professional growth. There is some humor here, but there is a huge amount of sorrow and pain. One does not do this kind of work for 35 years without it taking a toll on your soul.

Martin closes his book with the following: And I can only hope that Shakespeare wasn't referring to storytellers like me when he wrote "Life is but a walking shadow...it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"! Rest assured that Martin's book is anything but this! It is a glimpse into one man's continent crossing dedicated life as a Foreign Correspondent, a glimpse into hell, and hopefully an offered understanding of "conflict" on the average person, as well as what covering such conflicts does to those who report them.

Please...READ THIS BOOK "BREAKING NEWS"!

I couldn't put this book down, and read it in one day. Martin Fletcher takes you where most reporters won't go, or can't go. You'll read of the intense competition between the networks, and what ranks as "go" or "no-go" story; which amounts to the number of people dying or killed as being newsworthy.

Stories of fellow journalists who are killed and wounded (including his own first-person account), in attempts to bring the stories of war and its victims to our television screens. How Fletcher identifies with the suffering of the victims of war in Somalia and the "Ethnic-Cleansing" of the conflicts in Rwanda and Kosovo; with his own family's suffering in The Holocaust.

From the Arab-Israeli Wars to the present Palestinian struggle, to personal interviews with a warlord, suicide bombers and refugees (one very touching story of a young girl). There'll be stories that will make you laugh, cry, and some that will anger you. But they are all presented within a very personal and moving context that almost makes you feel as if you're right there, experiencing Fletcher's witness of history in the making. And that indeed, this is a very dangerous and evil world in which
live.

An amazing, POWERFUL, insight into the world of Martin Fletcher. I read the book in two sittings, four days ago, and I am still thinking about it. He tells his story in a 'mostly' chronological order, leaving me breathless at the end. It's an incredible journey and I am so thankful he took the time to tell it!

This is a very different, deeply-impressing account by a very special reporter - and if this book hadn't been thrust under my nose with the recommendation to read it, I would have assumed it was the usual set of star-turn anecdotes from someone who thought they were the star-turn. Not a bit of it. Unlike some, Fletcher is never, ever bigger than the news on which he reports.

If this was only the most brilliant account of exceptional, award-winning TV war-reporting journalism, which, incidentally, it is - then that in itself that would be something. But it's much more than that; it's about the moral and ethical dilemmas that people like Fletcher face daily on our behalf in reporting serious news - and, refreshingly, nothing to do with the soulless ephemerals of providing 'entertaining' so-called, 'news' features between adverts.

Fletcher is one of the last vestiges of conscience and soul in the digital age when it comes to serious news reporting. Breaking News is likely - and rightly - to be considered core-curriculum stuff for anyone considering serious journalism as a career - but it's also likely a must-read for anyone who wants to share Fletcher's personal 'take' - and the chance to share in his very human enlightenment - through his reporting of a truly extraordinary series of world events over 30 years.

Most of us will never know the inside of a war correspondent's job. We should be thankful that veteran war correspondent Martin Fletcher has provided that glimpse for us.

Fletcher is currently serving as NBC Mideast News Bureau Chief in Tel Aviv.

Fletcher has written beautifully, movingly and tragically of his 30-year career, covering the strife in Israel, Zaire, Afghanistan, Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and other war torn areas of the world.

At times, the descriptions are brutal, graphic.

At times, Fletcher breaks your heart. But always, Fletcher tells it like it is.

Fletcher began his career as a cameraman who had grown bored with his BBC desk job, and describes his constant yearning for more as living a life always on 'fast forward'.




Fletcher's father, Georg, was a young lawyer in Vienna in 1938 who fled Austria with his wife after escaping from a Nazi jail. Martin was born in London and Georg changed his name to George and the family name from Fleischer to Fletcher. Very few in Fletcher's parents' families survived the Holocaust. Martin Fletcher writes in his introduction that:


"I am proud to say that I have rarely interviewed a head of state or a chief executive officer. I don't care what the generals have to say...Nobody with a story to sell or a policy to spin interests me. What I care about are the people who pay the price, as my family did."


And that is what he tells in Breaking News - the stories of people who have paid the price; most often, with their lives.

Sometimes, those who paid the price were journalists. In August 1967, Fletcher and other journalists were in Cyprus:

BEGIN EXCERPT:

"...As it was August 7, the first day of renewed peace talks in Geneva and we needed to show what was happening on the ground, we said thank you and drove off. Nobody's going to shoot just when their leaders are sitting to talk, we thought. And we were right. Nobody shot. But we didn't think about land mines...


..."Ted, in the backseat with the camera and sound gear, looked out the window.


"The main road along the coast of northern Cyprus has many gentle bends, with fields on both sides and occasional narrow slip lanes to the right that lead to villages on the slopes of the low Kyrenia mountain range...It is a beautiful drive, with cows grazing in green fields, sweet-smelling bushes with butterflies and birds, and ancient gnarled olive trees...Here Lawrence Durrell made his home and under a sweeping lemon tree in the village center wrote much of his famous book Bitter Lemons."


..."Simon drove slowly, no more than fifteen miles an hour. All three of us scanned the road for mines and peered into the bushes ahead for Turks...


..."This time there was no barbed wire, and there were no warning signs. Simon and I spotted the mounds pushing up on the tar road at exactly the same time, and we shouted almost in unison: 'Mines" They were about a foot apart, arranged in 3-2-3 formation, and stretched forward as far as I could see. Some were just bumps in the earth, others were in plain view...


"Even at such slow speed, there was no time to jam on the brakes...

..."Here I'd like to describe how I felt, but I have no memory...[multiple cars went through the minefield]...

"The yellow car at the back pulled out. 'What's up? Why'd you stop?' the New York Times guy yelled. He began to overtake the car in front, heading toward us and the mines. There is no word I know to describe that instant of sheer terror. The fucker was going to kill us all. Then the car stopped. ...

..."Then Ted opened his door and got out. He held up his arm and shouted a warning, telling them to get back. That's when Ted trod on the mine. It was a Bouncing Betty ...'an antipersonnel mine that, when you tread on it or hit a trip wire, leaps into the air and explodes at chest height. It can blow your head off'...."

END EXCERPT

You will not be able to put down this book.



At the heart of photojournalism is the ability to capture humanity in its most human moments; in war, this often means death. Correspondents were told to take pictures as close to the subject as possible. In war, that often meant photographing people in the act of dying.

Fletcher argues that a journalist should put aside, for the moment, the very human difficulty of 'exploiting victims in order to save them', as Fletcher writes, or of 'cozying up to the perpetrators.'

As cruel and insensitive as that may seem, it can be necessary, simply to bring the story of cruelty to the public. And by bringing the story to the public, more lives can be saved.


Of his experiences in Somalia, Fletcher writes that by 1993, the drugged-up teens chewed 'khat' the drug the Somali warlords supplied to the children to keep the children's crusade killing and dying, dying and killing.


BEGIN EXCERPT:

"The oldest boy looked maybe sixteen. They were all shiny with sweat and had yellow-green teeth from the constant mashing of khat. One had dirty white bandages seeping blood wrapped around his shoulder to cover a bullet wound...

"...Twice on our journey gunfire broke out. Our boy-guards whipped their machine guns around to the source of the shooting while our driver trod on the gas, hurling us against the hard metal...

END EXCERPT


Here Fletcher arrives at one of the most gripping episodes in his entire book, the death of Fida Ibraham and the filming of it on camera - and of the moral dilemma one faces, Fletcher writes, that directs 'good people to do bad things for a good reason.'

That issue is at the crux of the human dilemma in this type of journalism.

To bring to light for all of the television watching world, Fletcher and his film crew - an assignment originated from Tom Brokaw - decided to film someone dying, to let the world know what it is like to die of starvation.

Inside a hut in the village lay Fida Ibraham, who was a refugee from Baidoa and who had walked 120 miles to Mogadishu.


BEGIN EXCERPT:

"She had survived for four days, but now black flies buzzed around her bulging brown eyes, and her thin lips drew tight against her yellowing teeth as she cried. Her long bony fingers dug weakly at the worms under her dry and wrinkled skin, but she didn't have the strength, and her skinny arm dropped suddenly and dangled over the side of the broken wooden barrow Annette used to carry away the dying."

..."Yossi was crouching crablike by Fida's side, his wide-angle close to her face, so the world would see in close-up her pain, fear, and humiliation...Fida whined and gasped in pain as the aid workers lowered her carefully onto a blanket on the bare concrete floor and inserted an IV drip into her vein. Every bone stuck out. She looked like a box of matches. "

END EXCERPT

Fida had TB, malaria and scabies. Her father, Mohammed, sat by her side, her aunt sat at Fida's head and the cameraman, Yossi, kneeled by his camera. Annette fed Fida small drops of water from a spoon.


BEGIN EXCERPT:

"We were the voyeurs of death. It was hard. I knew we were abusing poor Fida, but I felt this was a scene the world should see and understand. If the viewer felt sick, good."


END EXCERPT


Fletcher's gripping account of his years as a war correspondent does not end with Somalia. He takes the reader to civil war torn Rwanda with the savage killing of the Hutus and the Tutsi, and then on to Kosovo.


He ends his book with a brief discussion of why anyone, rationally - would choose such a career as his has been, and provides an answer that in this world obsessed with 'celebrity, wealth and success', he worked to tell the story of 'those left behind' of 'those who paid the price', and offering words from the Bard, echoed by Faulkner that he hopes his efforts will be counted as more than "'Life's but a walking shadow...it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'."

Fletcher tells a powerful story we all should read. His memoir signifies much on the stage of world affairs.

Intense, gripping, superb.

It would be tempting to label this book for those whose interests lie in journalism or history or world affairs. The truth is one doesn't have to have a background--or a future--in any of those things. This book is about our shared humanity. While Martin helped me understand how, when, and why conflicts erupted in certain parts of the world, and while I appreciated the dangers he faced in all corners of the globe, along with his incredible bravery or stupidity (sometimes both), I was touched most deeply by the stories of people simply trying to live their quiet lives. Racial, ethnic, and tribal differences don't exist inside the heart of a parent trying to save his child. The blood spilled is the same color whether it's shed by innocents caught in crossfire or determined young men who blow themselves up in the name of their beliefs. Martin's own journey from callous young reporter bent on scooping the competition, to a father who now struggles with the pain and suffering that come with the job, was the real story for me. He has spent a lifetime opening our eyes so we can't pretend not to know, only to have to close his own when his heart can carry no more.

Great book detailing the life and times of a foreign correspondent for various news networks. Tells of Fletcher's rise through the ranks from junior subeditor at BBC London to his dream job of leading his own crew as producer for NBC. Martin tells of his victories and defeats while chasing the worlds best news stories, covering some of the worst attrocities in modern history.

This is a very exciting and informative look into the world of foreign correspondents or "combat journalism." I couldn't put this book down until it was finished. I just wish I could fiond more books like this!

GET THIS BOOK!! GREAT READ!!

I want to just add to the 5 star reviews. As a moderate I was pleasantly surprised by how balanced this book was. The author clearly struggled with his feelings and never acted superior. As you get deeper into the book it becomes as riveting as any book I can recall. Very highly recommended.

I was fascinated with the stories that Mr. Fletcher told but found that he sometimes rambled and interspersed one story with another. He needed better editing but all in all, I enjoyed the book which resembled another of his books, Walking Israel.

While his assignments were exciting and Fletcher often courted danger in order to get the best story, it is his humanity and fair-minded view of parties in conflict that elevates the narrative. He has very personal reasons for hating bullies at all levels, and nevertheless remained calm and objective when meeting some of the world's worst. His writing style is easy to read and will put you right there beside him in situations that most of us would never even consider getting into. Bravo, Martin!