Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Foreign Correspondent

Every day we are inundated with domestic news coverage . Every nuance, every utterance by every political actor is reported and analyzed over and over again. But covering the world is often a different story. It’s hard, often dangerous work.

Being a foreign correspondent is not the glamorous job it’s often portrayed as in TV and in the movies. It's the hard work of understanding locals and local custom, of sometimes taking risks, both personal and professional, and trusting and bonding with locals for what often is a transactional relationship

But what happens when that bond becomes more? How does it impact the reporter and, like the butterfly flapping its wings with the impact felt halfway around the world, what is the lasting impact of the relationship, long after the reporter has left or the story is over.

That's the story that Deborah Campbell tell in A Disappearance in Damascus: Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War.

My conversation with Deborah Campbell: