The Embed: A Young Reporter Finds His Way Into Iraq

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by patwalters

Published Dec. 18, 2006 2:07 pm

Updated Mar. 3, 2011 3:47 pm

Scott Waldman is 31 years old. He has been working as a journalist for two

years. A little more than a month ago, he was on a military base outside

Baghdad, clad in a Kevlar helmet and body armor, reporting on the war.

In my last column, I described my effort to answer a question: How might a

young journalist prepare to report from Iraq?

Stay home, I was told. Iraq, I learned, is a place in which it has become nearly

impossible to do journalism. The risk of being kidnapped or killed, Wall Street

Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi told me, has begun to outweigh the benefits of

reporting the story.

The evening I posted that column, I received an e-mail from Waldman, a reporter

at The Erie (Pa.) Times-News. He told me he had recently returned from an

embed in Iraq. Theres a lot I wish I knew going into this, he wrote, but its not

an impossible task to pull off.

Waldmans e-mail reminded me of something Reuters editor Paul Holmes had

told me the day before. As an embed, he said, you are actually able to function

pretty well as a reporter. The assignment limits a reporters work, but keeps

him comparatively safe.

I called Waldman to ask him about his recent trip to Iraq.

It was August, Waldman told me, when he asked his editor if he could go to

Iraq. The editor showed interest but wanted details. For the next two weeks,

Waldman did research.

During an embed, he learned, the military provides everything you need to

survive food, shelter, transportation and, of course, protection. There is no

fee. But other expenses, Waldman found, would be plentiful.

By Nov. 1, Waldman was on a plane to Kuwait City. His destination: the 329th

Medical Company, a U.S. Army Reserve unit spread across several bases in

the area surrounding Baghdad. Of the 70 soldiers in the unit, roughly 40 of them

were from the Erie area.

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By Nov. 3, Waldman was in Baghdad. The round-trip flight to Kuwait cost the

newspaper $1,200. Renting a satellite phone was another $400. He borrowed a

Level 4 Kevlar helmet and bulletproof vest a set he said was worth upwards

of $2,000 from the local SWAT team. The paper supplied him with a Dell

laptop, an Olympus digital-audio recorder, a Nikon D200 SLR digital camera

and a Sony Handycam.

In all, Waldman estimates the trip cost nearly $3,000.

By the standards of this war, his trip was cheap, and his mission was simple.

As a reporter for a local newspaper, his focus was on Eries soldiers. He wrote

about their lives. He wrote about the things they saw, the things they heard

about and the things they did.

The things The L.A. Times and The New York Times are doing are important,

but there are all these other little stories, too, Waldman said. The focus really

was, Heres what Erie folks are doing in this war. And, to me, I havent seen

a lot of that coverage.

Waldman kept a grueling schedule, generally reporting two stories and a blog

entry each day. He made pictures, edited them and wrote cutlines. He recorded

audio and video, as well.

You have to learn to have the endurance not to sleep, Waldman said. I had to

drink a lot of coffee and stagger my caffeine intake strategically throughout the

day.

It was exhausting work. Waldman rarely showered or changed his clothes. But

he was safe.

When youre in the bases, you feel pretty secure, Waldman said. They lob

mortars in all the time. But the bases are so huge. Its like throwing

pennies into a cornfield.

Most embeds, even those with combat units, are relatively safe assignments,

Holmes told me. Soldiers protect the reporter and, if needed, provide medical

attention. But in exchange for safety, what does a reporter give up?

To answer this question, I found Canadian freelance photojournalist Rita

Leistner. In 2003 she embedded with an American cavalry unit in Baghdad. In

2004 she returned to Iraq and worked independently.

An embed, she told me, provides safety but presents serious limitations.

Leistner said her embed was informal. In 2003, she entered the country alone,

crossing the Turkish border illegally with the help of a smuggler. Before long,

she was spending the afternoons with an American cavalry unit. And,

eventually, she said, the soldiers invited her to live with them at their base. She

spent three months with those men, composing a photo essay about the unit.

Leistner said their story was important, but it was not the only one she would

tell.




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When Leistner returned to Iraq in March of 2004, she did so alone, again. But

this time, she said, she continued to work independently. She was

unembedded.

Leistner photographed a face of the war that she said often goes

undocumented. Her pictures illustrate the destruction and death of the war, at

close range. Some of them show the war as it was seen by the insurgents.

Leistner and three other independent photojournalists recently published some

of their work from Iraq in a book called Unembedded: Four Independent

Photojournalists on the War in Iraq. The pictures in the book are striking.

Check it out here.

Making those pictures was extremely dangerous. But, to Leistner, telling the

stories was worth the risk. They were pictures she could not have made if she

had been embedded.

You can get a great close-up of a soldier firing a missile off of a tank, but the

missile is going to land a mile or two away, Leistner said, describing the work

she and her colleagues did as the city of Najef was being attacked by coalition

forces. Whos going to take a picture of where that missile lands?

Whoever youre with, Leistner said, thats who youre taking pictures of.

Leistners work highlights the limitations of embedding reporters with military

units. But they are limitations about which Waldman did not have to worry. He

was sent to write about American soldiers; and thats what he did.

The embed, then, as a reporting tactic, did little to hamper Waldmans

objective. He told me he was given 24/7 access to the soldiers. He ate, worked

out, slept and traveled with the soldiers he was reporting on.

But that, it turns out, can present another set of challenges.

Its really difficult to be living with the people youre covering, Waldman said. I

mean, everyday these guys would be reading these things as soon as I posted

them online.

Sometimes, he said, the military reviewed his copy before he posted it, a

sacrifice military rules required Waldman to make.

Waldman often received letters from readers back in Erie, parents of the men

and women about whom he was writing. They were happy with his work. And

that worried him.

You have to ask yourself, as a journalist, Waldman said, Just because the

families are writing and are pleased, does that mean Im doing my best job?

The potential for a reporter to be influenced by his relationship with the soldiers

he is reporting on is great during an embed. It is a concern, Holmes said, that

every embedded reporter must deal with. Its something editors should look out

for, too.




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If youre living in difficult situations with people, and theyre getting shot at, and

youre getting shot at, it creates a bond, Holmes told me. And Im not saying

thats a bad thing. But [sometimes] you cant see the woods for the trees.

Your field of vision in a military unit is really limited to your immediate

surroundings. I think its important to realize that when you go into an

embed.

Theres a trade-off, then, I think, between journalistic independence and safety.

Leistner said she was spied on, harrassed and shot at when she was working

independently in Iraq. Her life was constantly at risk.

Waldman, on the other hand, said he felt safe.

Leistner told me she has not been back to Iraq since 2004. It is too dangerous,

she said, a statement that sounds strange coming from a woman who has

endured such terrifying danger. She plans to spend the winter in Syria, learning

Arabic.

Waldmans work shows that, under certain circumstances, a young journalist

can report safely from Iraq.

He knows the pieces he wrote do not tell the whole story of Iraq.

But does the public? As more and more journalists are forced off the streets of

Baghdad into bureaus and American military units, I wonder how it is affecting

our understanding of this war. It scares me to think that, at some point, stories

from embeds like Waldman might be all we have left.



The Embed: A Young Reporter Finds His Way Into Iraq

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