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4.0 out of 5 stars
Dying for a story -- and in the pursuit of justice, September 12, 2009
This review is from: Marked for Death: Dying for the Story in the World's Most Dangerous Places (Hardcover)
Every autumn, the Committee to Protect Journalists holds a gala fundraising dinner, often at the Waldorf or some other equally impressive venue, where household names from American journalism (Christiane Amanpour, Lewis Lapham, etc.) show up to lend their support to the cause of drawing attention to the journalists around the world killed each year as they go about their daily routines of gathering and reporting the news. I've been to several of these, at each of which four reporters from different parts of the world receive the CPJ's Courage in Journalism award, and it's hard to walk away without feeling simultaneously awed by what the recipients must do to preserve what we so often take for granted -- the right to voice an opinion, uncover corruption or simply chronicle the lives of those affected by state policies like the wars in Chechnya.
The people who receive these award come from countries that rarely grab our attention except during a war, revolution or some other kind of civil strife or catastrophe. When an American or Western journalist is kidnapped or murdered, we are justly horrified and sickened -- but we hear about it. The lives of CPJ Courage in Journalism awards and those of the subject of this book, however, are usually lived out in relative anonymity. They are battling local issues of vital importance to their countries or communities and rarely have a high profile outside their countries -- China, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Tajikistan or Turkey. In this book, Terry Gould takes us behind the scenes of five crusading reporters, each of whom paid for their own courage to tackle corrupt establishments with their lives, in an effort to bring their struggles to a wider audience.
It's an immensely laudable project, but one that doesn't always succeed as well as it might have. Gould chose to profile seven journalists slain in the five countries where the most reporters have been murdered as a result of pursuing their profession: Colombia, Russia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Iraq. He outlines the lives of each of the five, showing how they reached the point, both personally and professionally, where they could do nothing but pursue their attempts to unmask the evils of the societies in which they lived. Most intriguingly, he makes it clear how difficult it was for colleagues and families of his profilees to cope with their all-consuming passion for their cause, showing, in the process, how easy it can be for even the most well-intentioned citizen to make his or her peace with the regime of their home country, however oppressive. His subjects are courageous, but also gadflies, whose children and lovers resent them, whose colleagues don't like sharing office space with them, who are intolerant of disagreement or even dialog with their opponents. In other words, they are driven individuals, with all that implies; they may have acted heroically, but none of them were candidates for sainthood, and Gould never shies away from all those awkward facts.
The only journalist likely to be at all familiar to even well-informed Americans among this collection is the Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down in her own apartment building, probably because of her outspoken condemnation of the way Russia approached the Chechen conflict, which spilled over into more sweeping (and damning) critiques of Vladimir Putin's regime. The reason for her inclusion (Gould also profiles two other less-known regional Russian journalists) is easy: her murder took place while Gould was flying to Moscow to pursue this part of his research and to talk to her. Just before his departure, he'd received an e-mail suggesting they arrange to meet; within hours of landing, he learned of her murder.
But while Gould's chosen format -- selecting journalists in each of these countries and then profiling them -- sounds like an intelligent way to proceed with such a project, it doesn't translate into a compelling book. Reading profile after profile, we get bogged down in minutiae of their lives and careers as well as the often complex and always very distinctive political and economic forces that collided and cost each journalist his or her life. It's a lot to keep track of, even for someone with a reasonably solid knowledge of current affairs in each of the various countries. I kept finding myself wishing that Gould had chosen to take a more thematic and comparative approach, one that might have helped me understand how the practice of journalism evolved in theory and reality around the world (is there an equivalent to the First Amendment outside the United States, for instance? and how do libel laws differ?) While Gould is dedicated to reminding us of these reporters' lives, I think the approach backfires, especially given the fact that those lives were often lived as "squeaky wheels" -- the kind of people who are uncomfortable to be around. Focusing on what they had in common -- crusades against oppressive authority and corruption -- and showing how that differed in practice; emphasizing what it means to be a journalist outside "the West"; addressing the law enforcement corruption that in all cases enabled the murderers to escape justice -- might have ended up making this a much more memorable book. It might also have made it a book whose broader point becomes clear -- that every year, dozens of people die doing what we assume is an automatic right, bringing news and information to their fellow citizens -- rather than a collection of memorial tributes. Gould does make those points in his introduction and conclusion, but to make this a stand-out book on the topic, he needed to 'show' it more clearly during the rest of the narrative.
While that was my main beef with this book, I did find a stylistic element also interfered with my ability to digest what should have been a compelling story. Gould interjects his own interviews with the colleagues, friends and enemies in almost dialog form, chronicling his own questions and their answers. That's a clumsy way to tell the story of a life. (Take a look at Dan Baum's book about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, composed entirely of interviews, and yet one where the author never makes himself a character in a story that doesn't belong to him.) That approach only works when the author is part of the story -- when he knows the people involved, has had the same experiences or there is some other unique reason for being a character in the book. Otherwise, it is the equivalent of a stand-up by a television reporter -- a piece of theater saying "look, I was here, doing this and talking to these people!". (A lot of the footnotes are similarly exhaustively detailed and irrelevant -- if facts like what the author was showed by an interviewee matters, it belongs in the main story.)
Collectively, these structural and stylistic issues turned what could have been a five-star book to one that I've rated 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4 stars because of the importance of the topic.)
For more information on the bigger picture, take a look at the website of The Committee to Protect Journalists, which documents who is slain and the cases under investigation. (As I write this review, 27 journalists died on the job in 2009.) Some, of course, came from countries in the midst of war or violent conflict, but others live in places like the Philippines, Honduras, Thailand, Russia and Venezuela that are relatively stable and nominally democratic.
Recommended reading for all, despite its flaws, simply because it may alert more people to the issue. That said, it's probably a book that will be most appreciated by those who are already interested in media issues and geopolitical issues.
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