September 2009

Rolling Stone -- "50 Best Reasons to Watch TV"

Somehow managed to totally miss this, big thanks to Mary for sending it along -- a recent issue of Rolling Stone listed the 50 Best Reasons to Watch TV ... and at number 26:

Sarmad Qasiri's photos

Michael's cameraman in Afghanistan, Samad Qasiri, has some still photos posted on CNN.com, including these of Michael and Tommy. (Showing these with and without captions.)


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Looking for justice for Paul Moran

An article by Mark Corcoran on the ABC News (Aus) website, Calls For Justice for Cameraman Slain in Iraq details the search for justice for the man responsible for the death of Australian journalist Paul Moran in the early days of the Iraq war.

As you may remember, Michael was there when the bomb went off, and is mentioned in the article:

I've learned to dread late night phone calls - and this one was the worst. It was March 2003, during the opening phase of the Iraq war. Just after midnight I took the call from an anguished Michael Ware - an Australian journalist and close colleague of mine, then working for Time Magazine.


Coming down the satellite phone line was a mix of static, screaming and sirens. Amid the cacophony, Michael managed to spell out that he was at a roadblock in Kurdish northern Iraq that had just been hit by a suicide bomber in a taxi. He was on the scene giving assistance to ABC journalist Eric Campbell, dazed and bloodied after being hit by shrapnel, but alive. However there was the body of another westerner among the victims - possibly an Australian - who was he?


The tragic details soon became clear. He was 39-year-old Paul Moran, a freelance cameraman originally from Adelaide. He had teamed up with Eric Campbell on the Iraq assignment for ABC News. Paul left behind a young widow Ivana and a seven-week-old daughter Tara.

It's a chilling article, and knowing that the man responsible is flaunting his freedom is incredibly infuriating.

A Red River Shoutout

This column appears in this week's Red River Miner:

Rock stars may become passé in my world. I thought they might be on their way out of my heart when Anderson Cooper hit the spotlight, but now that I have seen/heard Michael Ware, “It’s all over Baby Blue”-Dylan. Mr. Ware is a foreign correspondent for CNN that works from the trenches in the old school style similar to Ernie Pyle. With his Aussie accent and broken nose he appears to be more of a brawler than bookish, but the guy gets it. Recently on an episode of HBO’s Bill Maher show he explained the trichotomy of India/Pakistan and Afghanistan more clearly and efficiently than anyone I’ve heard yet. I actually understood what he was saying and why we may be in the predicament we are in. I am aware that perhaps it’s my level of understanding that may be in question rather than the talking heads lack of knowledge, but what matters is that I found a source I am comfortable with.

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Baltimore Sun interview

Yesterday, David Zurawik, the TV critic for the Baltimore Sun, posted an article about the controversy over the AP publishing a photo of a wounded and dying soldier, which includes this:

I have an interview in Sunday's "Sun" with CNN's Michael Ware who is in Afghanistan reporting on his own without the protection of the U.S. military. As highly dangerous as that it, Ware says that is the only way he can tell the full story of the war. If a news organzation signs an embed agreement with the Pentagon, I think there is a moral obligation to honor it -- or otherwise, do what Ware is doing. Does it seem like the AP is trying to have it both ways?



And here is the full interview:

CNN heads to Afghanistan for 9/11 anniversary

By David Zurawik
September 6, 2009

Of all the cable and network news channel plans to commemorate the attacks of 9/11 this week with special programs, none seems more timely and relevant than that of CNN. The cable news network has sent a team of correspondents led by anchorman Anderson Cooper into Afghanistan to do a week's worth of nightly broadcasts on the status of the fight against the Taliban. The series starts Monday night and culminates in an hourlong wrap-up at 8 p.m. Saturday.

"Anderson Cooper 360" will broadcast live from Afghanistan, with the help of international correspondent Michael Ware, medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen.

And lest anyone think this is simply a case of hot spot-hopping anchorman coverage intended to paper over a lack of sustained reporting, CNN is one of the only U.S. news organizations, print or broadcast, with a full-time bureau in Afghanistan, and Cooper himself has been there several times before.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this week's coverage is the multiple lenses through which Cooper's team examines America's war effort. While Cooper and Gupta will be embedded with the U.S. forces, Ware will be on his own in the country, trying to see back "through the fence" at the U.S. military effort, to use the veteran reporter's terminology. Ware, a native Australian, spent more than a decade in the cable channel's Baghdad bureau covering the Iraq conflict.

Pointing to an "evolution in tactics by the Taliban," Cooper described his goals for the week in Afghanistan as "trying to get a status report on the war" and to "get as close to the front as possible, to go out on as many patrols as possible - and really get a sense of how the war's going," the 42-year-old Yale graduate said in a telephone interview last week. "What are the challenges? ... And what should we expect in terms of what's coming down the road? ... We believe very strongly in going to the front lines of any story and seeing for ourselves what's going on."

As for making the trip during the week of 9/11: "The way the United States originally got involved in Afghanistan is because of 9/11, and the same players are still a factor in the region," Cooper said.

"We have been planning this trip for quite a while, and it just happened to be the week of 9/11. And it seemed appropriate. ... And certainly the Obama administration makes a linkage in saying the reason we are there now is to stop al-Qaida and to protect the United States from any further attacks."

Cooper knows there are limits to what U.S. reporters are allowed to "see" while embedded, which is why Ware's contribution is so important.

"As much as we can, we're attempting to see through the fence to the other side - what the American war effort looks like from the Afghan perspective," Ware said last week via telephone from the war-torn country. "To do that, part of what we've done is to share the difficulties of life that the Afghans experience as a result of the insurgency, to get a real taste of what it's like living under the shadow of the Taliban far beyond the hollow rhetoric that you hear coming from the White House."

Ware described what it takes to get that perspective and bring it to American viewers.

"For me, what I find works best in Afghanistan is to operate independent of the U.S. military," Ware said. "You need to attempt to assimilate as much as is conceivably possible. That can be as simple as wearing Afghan dress or growing your beard to a reasonable Afghan length."

Contrasting his method of "surviving" and reporting free of the military in Afghanistan with the way he operated in Iraq, Ware said, "I go and I seek the favor and protection of the local powers that be. In this particular case, it might be the head of the most powerful tribe in the region that happens to support the Taliban. It might also mean seeking the protection of a tribe that's deeply invested in the Karzai government."

Ware, 40, said his contacts built up over the years also play a role in getting an independent view of the war effort.

"Operating independent of the military also means meeting with a senior police commander who's been my friend for seven years. [He] has outlived numerous police chiefs and governors, and he still somehow survives in the turmoil in Kandahar," the former Time magazine Baghdad correspondent says.

"You need to be able to turn to people ... with the power to offer you some modicum of protection. To rely on the tribal system itself that the Obama war mission has neglected is the way that we survive here."

If some of what Ware says echoes Vietnam, with the American military not fully understanding Afghan culture, the CNN correspondent says so be it.

"The facts on the ground rather frighteningly speak for themselves," he says after laying out a nuanced and extensive explanation of what the military appears to appreciate and not appreciate about Afghanistan as "barely more than a feudal society" built on tribes.

CNN is obviously trying to take advantage of its edge in international coverage with the week of reports billed as "Inside the Battle Zone." But why not? It is an edge the channel pays for by committing resources to bureaus in places like Afghanistan.

Furthermore, when many national TV operations offer little or none of their own international coverage, it is all the more impressive to hear the likes of Cooper and Ware dissecting and explaining the need for multiple points of view and methods of reporting so that American viewers can have trustworthy information about the conflict.

"It's unfortunate we have seen networks cutting back on international coverage. And what that means is stories don't get told about what's happening in Afghanistan, what's happening in Iraq, or what our troops are going through," Cooper said.

"Increasingly, those stories fade from the headlines and from the evening newscasts. CNN is in the enviable position of actually increasing our foreign coverage. We have a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan. We have a bureau there. We're able to be there on a daily basis. ... And then, we're able to go in with coverage like this during the week of 9/11. This is what we do."

'Inside the Battle Zone'
"Anderson Cooper 360: Inside the Battle Zone" airs Monday-Friday 10 p.m.-midnight on CNN. The series finale airs Saturday at 8 p.m.

Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun