Global Journalist

Journalist's Journal

By Matthew Bolton Posted Jul 1 2004

Home / Recent Stories / Journalist's Journal

I observed the Iraq war's surreal beginnings on television from my living room as a humanitarian aid worker in Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina – bewildered by the deluge of images, reports, maps and backhanded swipes at the French.

Despite the avalanche of information rushing at me each night, I found it made little sense. I watched green-tinted images of reporters caught in night sandstorms, struggling to shout over the wind as they told stories that added nothing to my understanding of what was happening or why coalition troops were there in the first place.

Seven months later, this time watching television in Erbil, Iraq, I was struck by the enormous gulf between my experience working alongside Iraqis and the reports on the evening news.

It may sound naive, but I was surprised to see how much people laugh and joke in Iraq – as much as any place in the world. Then I realized I had never seen a media depiction of an Iraqi laughing. Images of the angry, despondent, tired and earnest, yes – but never ordinary Iraqis enjoying a good joke.

Iraq is a wide and diverse society, with cultures dating back thousands of years, yet I was completely unaware of its subtle human dimensions, hijacked for decades by one image – Saddam.

His image drowned out the nuances of Iraq: scenes of Kurdish mothers still making beds for “disappeared” sons, young men cruising through the Christian quarter to buy beer and look at uncovered girls, mine victims determined to learn to walk on prostheses, old men chatting amicably in doorways and giggly uniformed schoolgirls. As one colleague said to me, “Americans seem to think Saddam is the only Iraqi.”

I had a similar experience living in post-war Bosnia, where the media continued to cash in on the conflict, starting articles with leads like “driving down Sniper's Alley,” “we drove by bombed out houses” or “the wall was pockmarked with bullet holes.” Bosnia has been at peace longer than it was at war in the 1990s, but that war still defines American and European perceptions of the country.

This does nothing to educate the world about the subtleties of a country's social or even geographical context. Despite the hundreds of hours TV stations dedicated to Iraq, many of my friends in the United States cannot name any Iraqi cities other than Baghdad – one even thought Iraq was in Africa. All the endless ahistorical images of bloodied victims have told them is that Iraq is a dangerous place hostile to America.

I fear foreign correspondence is too often a fickle and abusive lover, showering attention on a country when it is at its most vulnerable and then abandoning it when more exciting “action” is elsewhere.

I stumbled on an alternative method of reporting while working in Iraq. For the past couple of years, traveling with my work in Bosnia and Zambia, I had written weekly e-mails to about 200 family and friends around the world about my experiences, the places I visited and people I met.

People began to forward these e-mails widely, and I started to receive responses from people I had never met. Many said they found the personal style and the focus on my ordinary day-to-day life a refreshing change from the sensationalism of the media.

When I found out I would go to Iraq, I decided to capitalize on the success of my e-mails and began freelance writing a weekly “Letters from Iraq” column for the weekend edition of The Examiner, the local daily paper in Independence, Mo., with a circulation of about 30,000. The Examiner, established in 1898, is owned by Morris Communications Company LLC, based in Atlanta. These columns were merely adaptations of my continuing weekly e-mails and maintained the informal style of a letter to my friends.

I told stories of the people I met – eccentric aid workers, a girl who survived the massacre of a whole village by the Ba'ath regime, and displaced persons returning to their destroyed homes.

I wrote about my disorientation and feelings of inadequacy, my loneliness in the long evenings, a close call in Mosul and the barrages of celebratory gunfire on Saddam's capture.

I used these anecdotes to introduce people to the cultural, historical, and political context of the country – helping them understand and better interpret the information they received from the news.

My articles were not particularly sophisticated, and probably anyone could have written them. Although I had written for the school newspaper in college, I had little formal training in journalism.

Imagine my surprise then when I returned to my home in Independence and found how widely my articles were read. As I ordered a drink in a coffee shop, went to church or bought new health insurance, people would recognize me and thank me for providing a “different perspective on things over there.”

The editors of the paper too were pleased, taking me out to eat and asking me to continue my columns as I traveled to the Dominican Republic and elsewhere.

This experience showed me I was not the only one feeling starved for coverage that fleshed out the simplistic portrayal of Iraq with a more nuanced and human perspective – moving beyond political rhetoric and dry military jargon to stories that connected me with the local people.

I believe that with its short attention span and addiction to sensation, much of the media has lost its human spirit. Even the so-called “alternative media” are often guilty of twisting foreign correspondence into a monotony of political rhetoric condemning American failure and hubris.

My experience writing “Letters from Iraq” for The Examiner showed me there is a great need, and I believe a marketable niche, for a more personal and experiential “participant journalism” in foreign correspondence: a style that elucidates the full spectrum of human experience beyond the lazy cliches of political, ethnic, cultural and religious stereotypes.

I believe foreign correspondence at its best can allow the reader or viewer to live vicariously in far-flung lands. In contrast to the disgust and pity provoked by graphic sensationalism, journalism can serve as the vehicle through which the reader or viewer comes into human contact with local inhabitants – enabling an empathetic response to their predicaments.

Iraq is the land of the 1001 Nights, the ancient kingdom of Babylon and, for centuries, the center of Islamic art, culture and learning. Today it still boasts a sophisticated and educated population, beautiful landscapes and diverse peoples and cultures.

I long to see the depth and breadth of this fascinating country break out of the strictures of 30-second soundbites of government officials and file footage of posing soldiers. I long to switch on the television and see there is more to Iraq than sand and bullets.