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Through in your face footage along with comments from foreign corespondents,
one gets a clear idea of just how dificult life is. The glamorous
image of a war correspondent is stripped away as the special reveals
that years spent on the frontlines take their toll. Alcholism, drug
abuse, suicides are not uncommon. There have been journalists who
have gone through three marriages as the home life got wrecked as
a result of the profession. Bowen covered wars on BBC for 11 years
starting with El Salvador. Bosnia and the Middle East were learning
experiences and he came very close to losing his life. Earlier this
year Bowen was appointed to the newly-created post of BBC Middle
East Editor
Speaking on the occasion of a media screening on Tuesday, BBC News
South Asia Bureau editor Paul Danahar says, "Hopefully after
viewers watch this they will never look at war coverage the same
way again. Our aim is to bring a clear picture of the effect that
war has on journalists covering them and on their families. In fact,
when I talked to Bowen a couple of years ago he refused to cover
the war on Iraq. That was because his wife was pregnant and he did
not want to face the possibility that his son might grow up without
a father. The BBC has 2000 foreign correspondents around the globe.
It is not as if they go out searching for conflicts."
"Very often it arrives on their doorsteps. Since they have
been living there, they are able to bring a perspective on why the
events are going on. I have covered the good and the bad stories
from regions like Africa. When I took up my current assignment in
Delhi, Kate Peyton took my place in Africa. Unfortunately she was
gunned down in Somalia. Now covering wars has become more dangerous
as journalists are seen as targets. When your friends and colleagues
get killed the little voice in your head that says 'It will not
happen to me' starts to ring hollow. We do have measures to prepare
journalists ranging from clothing to hostile training."
Danaher went on to add that the BBC basically wants to be first
and right. He gave the example of the bomb blasts in Mumbai where
some local channels exaggerated the number of blasts. "It is
important to never take a chance on reporting in the hopes of beating
the competition." A sad moment in the film comes when a cameraman
talks of getting nightmares after the Rwandan genocide. His dreams
were full of people crying for help and a room full of dead babies.
Bowen himself went into a catatonic state for a week after returning
home from covering the Bosnia conflict in the early 1990's. However
for him normal life felt stale in comparison.
Another point that the film brings home is the disillusionment
that journalists feel after spending several years on the job. When
they cover wars they hope that their coverage will make a difference
in terms of international opinion. Unfortunately it does not and
as Bowen points out this century looks like it is going to be as
worse in terms of violence as the previous one. CNN senior international
correspondent Christiane Amanpour says that the fear factor of reporting
from areas like the Gaza Strip increased after she had a son.
Skoda has tied up with BBC for the special. SkodaAuto India MD
Imran Hassen says,
" There are two key reasons for participating with BBC World
for this special screening, the first and most important one is
that programmes like these pass a larger social message towards
the lessons to be learnt from a war scenario, and for the fact that
SkodaAuto India and BBC World stand for similar values of quality
and truth."
BBC World's recent sponsors include Airtel, LG, IBM, HP and Speed.
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