Risk is inherent in our jobs, but we make calculated decisions. You’ve got to do whatever you can to make sure we’ll be as safe as possible. Looking at worst- and best-case scenarios, you have to be ready for all of them. For a large operation, like we had at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you need good people willing to work long hours and think out of the box to pull all that together. I could never have done that without my great colleagues on the ground, who really deserve the credit. And we made sure we had good local journalists around, which is always the key to everything.
Why is partnering with local journalists so important?
Every single place around the world where I’ve worked, the most important component is having good people from that country to work with us, whether they’re editorial or logistical. In the case of Ukraine, it’s the same thing. We managed to find a really amazing group of Ukrainian journalists. They are our eyes and ears on the ground and they help shape our coverage. And they’re not all journalists; there are people from many different backgrounds who have helped us build up our operation. They’re very often the unsung heroes of the work we do, because without them we couldn’t do anything. I can’t thank them enough for their contributions.
It’s also important to note that for our Ukrainian journalists, fixers and drivers, the war is intensely personal. It’s their country that is under attack. They have family and friends who’ve suffered tremendous personal losses. The worry, stress and uncertainty weigh on everybody, but their contribution, focus and dedication to their work with us can’t be overstated. Those of us who come in to report from the outside go home at the end of our assignments. They don’t have that luxury. They live the war day after day.
What’s a moment from the conflict that will stay with you?
There’s a deaf couple that we met at this hotel in Kyiv. They were employed here as cleaners and they would take care of our workspace and our live shot locations and clean day in and day out. When the war started, to them it was a very different experience than to most of us, because they couldn’t hear the bombs unless there was shelling or bombing right next to you and the building shakes. They had no idea. They can’t hear the bombs or sirens. They can’t hear the warnings to go into a shelter. It really crystalized how much more difficult and challenging it is to navigate a conflict for people with disabilities.
The couple asked us for help because they wanted to leave the country. Now, that’s not our job. We try to help people as much as we can, and it very much comes down to us as individuals to do the right thing. A lot of my colleagues here, we worked to help get them out of Ukraine because they felt unsafe. They ended up in Germany. They made a big impression on a lot of us, because they helped us a lot while we’ve been working here. This is not about us. It’s about them.
I joke around about it, but it’s not a joke – this is my second Russian invasion. I’m originally from Czechoslovakia, a country that was also invaded by Russia, the Soviet Union in those days. So this conflict to me has a strange resonance. I get what these people are going through, even though my country wasn’t pummeled as much as this one. There was not nearly this amount of destruction and death and suffering.
I immigrated to the United States, to Minnesota, and eventually got American citizenship. It was the same sort of story. We were refugees fleeing with one suitcase each. I was lucky. We were lucky in the end.
You covered the Gulf War, and were portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter in a film called “Live From Baghdad.” What was that like?