Key points of David Finkel Lecture
- Be a reporter first and writer second
- The world needs some witnesses
Witness the World, Report the Truth
In a Foster-Foreman lecture on Tuesday April 2, David Finkel visited Penn State and discussed his book, “The Good Soldiers.” He talked about his experiences in Baghdad and Iraq. He told several stories of soldiers and how he began writing the book. After he won his Pulitzer Prize in April of 2006, he found himself becoming very lazy. His editor told him to get busy and find soldiers getting ready to be deployed. He found a group in Fort Reilly, Kansas. He wrote the story and one of the men told Finkel to come overseas about half way through their deployment and write a follow up story. That’s when Finkel decided to write the book.
He told one story about a man named Josh Reeves. On September 22, 2007, Finkel and a Lt. Colonel were talking and heard an explosion by the gas station soldiers were stationed. The platoon was returning from the gas station when they hit the bomb. It greatly affected Reeves. Reeves had found out that his wife had given birth to their first child the day before. After being hit by the explosion, the platoon found Reeves barely alive. Doctors trying to keep him alive instantly surrounded him. A nurse was trying to clean and kicked something towards Finkle and another man. The man looked at the item and looked back at Finkle and said, “That’s a toe.” Reeves died that day. Finkle debated for a while if he was going to include that one line. He questioned whom his obligation was to, the family or the reader. The family doesn’t know the details of how Reeves died. He ended up including the story and received an email from the father of Reeves thanking him for the story. The father said that the family felt like they were with Josh in his last moments.
Finkel said that in this case the world needed witnesses. It’s difficult to explain to others that haven’t been overseas what the soldiers go through. Even the soldiers didn’t know exactly what they were getting into. Noha Mellor author of “Strategies for Autonomy” believes that journalists are the most common eyewitnesses in the world. The author says that because journalist witness so much they are becoming the experts of international affairs (Mellor, 2009, p. 318).
Another thing that Finkel discussed was how difficult it was for him to witness all of these things. He stressed over and over that he had to be a reporter first and a writer second. He watched bombs explode on American soldiers and watched as some of them took their last breaths. He said that his first duty was to report the facts. The writing would come along with the reporting. This is a lesson that he learned in college and has carried it with him throughout his entire career. Janine Cohen describes a similar situation that Martin Bell went through while reporting in the Balkans. He had an “engaged form of reporting called Journalism of attachment” (Cohen, 2010, p. 116). Bell witnessed some scary things but he had to report the story but report it with emotion.
Finkel discussed a lot of important lessons that journalists have to keep in mind. We have to remember that we are witnesses to everything and that’s one of our main purposes. After we witness things in this world, we have to accurately report what we saw. We have to report the situation first and then worry about the writing. I will take these lessons and use them in my writing forever. They are great things to keep in mind, and I’m very thankful to have learned them while I’m in school. I am already learning how to use my reporting skills and then worry about the writing.
Cohen, Janine. “Conflict reporting: Emotional attachment, a sense of morality and
reporting objectively.” Pacific Journalism Review 16.1 (2010): 113-24.
Communications and Mass Media Complete. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
Mellor, Noha. “Strategies for Autonomy.” Journalism Studies 10.3 (2009): 307-21.
Communications and Mass Media Complete. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.