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A war changes hour by hour, so a plan in the morning for a story is likely to change significantly by afternoon. That, indeed, had happened by the time correspondent Martin Fletcher called me from northern Israel at mid-day yesterday to review his story for last night's broadcast.
A visit to a bomb shelter in Nahariya by Fletcher, producer Kevin Monahan and cameraman Chaim Dekel began with the simple idea of checking on how people were doing after several days in the shelter. But as our team emerged, a series of rockets fired by Hezbollah militants started crashing into the neighborhood. Fletcher and our crew ran toward the places where the rockets came down, documenting the panic that unfolded and ending up at a field where a man was dead, his mother (in the confusion everyone first thought she was his wife) desperately trying to call him on the cell phone that, it turned out, lay ringing next to his body.
Viewer e-mail about our report reflected a range of sentiment. One called the story "inhumanely sensationalistic" for its depiction of the woman trying to reach her loved one. Another took issue with the tight focus on one Israeli community and one man's death and suggested a banner saying, "This message has been approved by the government of Israel and the Israel lobby." On the other hand, one viewer called the story a "riveting piece of journalism" and thanked us for "getting the news back to the news," while another said Fletcher's work "makes us feel like we are right next to him, everywhere he is."
And that, really, was the point. To us, it didn't matter whether Fletcher was in a town in Israel under attack or one in Lebanon. The story conveyed the sheer randomness and horror of war, something that is universal and something that is not easy to demonstrate. True, casualties in Lebanon have been much higher than those in Israel, a fact that we have consistently pointed out and will do again tonight in our coverage. But Israel was where this story literally found us for a couple of hours.
I realized after that mid-day conversation with Fletcher yesterday that we had something unusual -- a story that would take viewers inside a slice of this war as it unfolded on a sunny afternoon in one neighborhood. "We found ourselves in the middle of it," Fletcher told me today, "and we reported the news."
Read more from Ed Deitch, Posts on the Mideast
Wednesday's outlook in the Mideast
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You report what you see, that is all you can do. Then we see it. We need to see. War is war, it is not pretty, it is not glorious, it is not drums and flags. It is people fighting people, sometimes with the innocent suffering and dying, families being broken. It is random. War is a hateful condition whether you see it as necessary or not. It is what it is. And you showed us.
Jane, Southern Mississippi (Sent Jul 22, 2006 3:12:43 AM)
Anyone who follows wartime (news) events should know that this is exactly what correspondents have done as far back as the Civil War itself and on through the many conflicts that followed to the present day. remember Earnie Pile).When sudden events happen and a reporting crew arrives at the scene as a human interest situation unfolds even though it might not be a pleasant outcome,it is the responsibility of the journalists to pick up on it.This IS an example of the great tragic events that can develope suddenly in hostile wartime periods.People need to witness this through the eye of a cmerera and the observations and words of any knowledgable journalist.I applaud the great work Martin Fletcher has done and is doing along with the unseen crew with him in being right amidst the people who are caught up into the heart of what is happening.Sometimes being right in the homes and talking to these people, even though it may put them in harms way.And kudos to the production team for deciding to put a piece on the air at a moment's notice. This is exactly why my interest is with the NBC team coverage of these unfolding events and complemented by the written observations in the "Nightly news" blog.Thank you all for what you do to get these news stories to us the viewers. (GGB)
Gerry B. in Chicago (Sent Jul 19, 2006 4:52:30 PM)
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