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<< back to Spring 2005 news Journalist Kate Webb: Reporters must cover war Story by Lori Runkle Greenlee Web Team

Journalist Kate Webb delivers a lecture March 3 in the Memorial Union. Afterwards she signed books and talked with attendees. Photos by Jessica Plymesser, Greenlee Web Team.

 

Greenlee School Director Michael Bugeja introduced visiting journalist Kate Webb at her lecture March 3. (Remarks from Michael Bugeja)

"We have never met,” the former United Press International reporter said, “but I have been waiting for this day for 30 years.”

According to Bugeja, nobody influenced his career more than war reporter Webb, who also worked for UPI. Webb tells the truth, he said, "not cosmic philosophical truth… but truth that tells a story.”

Webb, who has covered wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, began her lecture by warning the audience that, “I’m a reporter. I’m used to asking questions … so bear with me.”

Webb, who presented “A War Reporter is Just a Reporter: No More, No Less,” said, “Anyone who is a journalist and thinks that war shouldn’t be covered, or is too dangerous to cover, is unconscionable.”

According to Webb, the Vietnam War might have been prevented if somebody, or some journalist, had documented the lie that started it.

"I’m not talking about one country” and one country’s lies and propaganda, she said. “I’m talking about politicians of many countries who start and perpetuate wars. Any war is at least 50 percent propaganda, if not more.”

Webb chose to focus her lecture on the war in Iraq because she assumed her audience of college students would be more familiar with that situation.

But she also discussed her experiences as a journalist covering the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the subsequent rise of the Taliban.

"Ethics are easier for war reporters than people covering local government,” she said, “because when you’re covering a war, people are dying all around you."

Covering up information in a war “seems so tawdry when people are dying all around you.”

When Webb discussed how she handled fear in a combat zone, she said, “Once you’re in, you’re too busy to think about being scared. You’re too busy doing what you’re doing, whether it is running, or taking care of the person next to you, because he got hit.”

Webb said, “I’m certainly against bravado,” when covering stories in dangerous areas of the world. She would tell the reporters who worked for her in Vietnam that, “Dead men don’t write stories. If you can, bring back your story. That doesn’t mean being a coward. It means CYA: Cover Your Ass!”

Webb said she finds American media coverage of the war in Iraq “very confusing,” because of the back-and-forth, push-and-pull of conservative and liberal ideologies in the coverage.

This “static” often drowns out the truth of the message, she said.

Webb stressed the importance of watching and listening to the BBC and other international media outlets to counteract bias in American coverage.

From Webb’s perspective as a journalist, it is imperative to critically ask and explore answers to two important questions concerning any war.

First, what causes both sides to go to battle? And second, what motivates the soldiers on both sides to fight? The answers to these questions may change as the war evolves, and the complexity of war means the answers are never simple, but the questions should be asked.

Vietnam War veterans Denny Eilers of Luana and Bob Anders of Ames consider Webb to be a veteran. “As time goes on, it’s good that veterans are talking to other veterans. I look at Kate as a veteran,” Eilers said.

Webb on language in the media
Journalists play an important part in sorting through the propaganda of war, and language plays a role in fueling propaganda, Webb said.

She gave several examples of the creative use of language during wartime, the most recent example being the use of guerrilla, terrorist, and insurgent by the American media and the U.S. government when referring to events in Iraq.

Webb explained how she defines three terms used to describe opposition fighters in Iraq.

• Guerrilla – Guerrilla fighters use hit and run tactics to wreak havoc on an occupying military force.

• Insurgent – Insurgents can also be called freedom fighters, and Webb compared insurgents in Iraq to the French Resistance movement in World War II. These fighters target an occupying army.

• Terrorist – Terrorists target civilians and use guerilla tactics.

Webb encouraged audience members to think about how the definitions of these three terms are manipulated for political ends.

She also questioned why the French Resistance is viewed as a positive force in American history, yet Iraqi insurgents are portrayed on American television as negative.

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