Six Weeks in the Devil's Swine Herd
by Rick Grant
Six weeks in Albania dealing with the international media amidst yet another huge human disaster has left me with two disparate but complementary views of how the media operates.
On one side were the many many fine professionals who put themselves at personal risk and always in conditions of extreme discomfort to make sure that the rest of the world understands the nature of the horror that creeps behind the mountains which ring Kosovo.
But there were others too who truly are members of what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called the Porcus ex grege diabola -- the Devil's Swineherd.
Of the eight hundred or so reporters and technicians who were in Albania when I was there a few stand out as true stalwarts of what reporting is supposed to be all about.
There was Tina Spencer of the Ottawa Citizen who took on an assignment in the Balkans when no one else at the paper wanted it and made it her own. She made her name with the relief workers in the northern town of Kukes, where the refugees pour through a narrow pass from Kosovo, by working harder than they had ever seen a reporter work.
Geoffrey York of the Globe and Mail consistently found insights into the refugee story that others missed. He also seemed to get to places that other reporters either couldn’t or wouldn’t go. For all I know by now he might even have got into Kosovo and lived to tell of it.
Anthony Germaine of CBC National Radio News was always deep inside the stories he told. Blessed with the uncommon ability to build pictures in the mind of the radio listener he was unceasing in his hunt for stories of significance that told us something about the human condition in the midst of chaos.
The BBC and Sky Television seemed to take the story of the Kosovo refugees as their raison d’etre and wouldn’t let go. Their correspondents were such constant factors in the refugee camps that I seriously thought at one point that they had moved in and occupied some tents to be closer to the refugees.
Even dear old CNN , war toy obsessed, and American centric as it is, pulled off some fine journalism. In the process they lost almost a million dollars worth of equipment throughout the Balkans to Albanian bandits, Serb soldiery, and Macedonian thieves. They lost it because they weren’t afraid of going where the story was.
Yet it is the members of the Porcus ex grege diabola who really stand out for me. But first you must understand that Albania is not unique in collecting some of journalism’s lesser members. I’ve seen the same kind of stupidity, mean mindedness and outright incompetence in Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia and even on parliament hill. Talk to anyone who has spent time in a disaster area and they’ll tell the same kinds of horror stories about reporters.
There’s one type of reporter who is truly loathed by any self respecting Bang Bang Artiste. That’s the hotel journalist. These not so fine men, and for some odd reason they always seem to be men, do no reporting of their own. They stay in their hotels, in the case of Albania that meant either the Tirana International or the Hotel Europark Rogner, and they never leave. They steal what they can get by watching BBC, CNN, Sky, and by eavesdropping on other reporters in the hotel bar.
They trade rumor for fact and gossip as news. A lot of stuff is simply made up.
While others are chancing the murderous mountain roads of Albania in the hunt for stories, or being confronted by armed thugs, or putting up with the misery of the refugee camps in order to bring some understanding to the rest of the world, the hotel reporters pretend to themselves and probably to their bosses that they are worth something. They’re not.
Another group that doesn’t get much respect is a sub sect of the freelancer tribe.
There are always a lot of freelancers in disaster areas but most of them arrive with at least one legitimate assignment in hand from a legitimate media organization. Most major news magazines use legions of freelancers and some are among the finest of the Bang Bang Artistes.
Unhappily however, human disaster also attracts the willfully stupid, the inexperienced, and the unprincipled. Albania, like every other disaster I’ve been involved with had its share.
Freelancers without an assignment are loaded guns. They are so desperate to make a name for themselves and desperate to make some money so they can cover their hotel bills that they will do anything including fabricate stories and pictures. They invariably run afoul of the local authorities, the local mafia, the bad guys, the good, and cause lasting trouble for the poor sods who are trying to do honest work.
Here’s a bit of a conversation I had one night in the Rogner Hotel Bar with a freelancer.
"Are you with CARE?"
Introductions follow and. . .
"Any chance of getting out to the refugee camps?"
"You bet. There's one just down the road near Dures."
"No. What about in Kosovo?"
"Nobody is in Kosovo except refugees and Serbs." I'm puzzled already.
"Well why not? Why doesn't CARE have any camps in Kosovo?"
"Because the Serbs control Kosovo, there's a war on, and no one is allowed in."
"Well I'm an American and I'm sure I can get in. If CARE is American why aren't you in Kosovo?"
"It doesn't matter if you are American, you might as well be from Alpha Centauri. The country is at war. If you did get in you'd be shot because Serbia is at war with the U-S along with the rest of NATO."
"Look. I'm an American citizen and I pay taxes and I have the right to ask a government agency under the First Amendment to give me the information I need in order to inform the public. The American People Have the Right to Know buddy."
I realize that this guy is a wingnut freshly polished by some minor state second rank journalism school. "CARE is independent of government.” I say. “It is an international organization. We have no operations in Kosovo. I can't help you."
"Don't you realize that you need the media? I can cause a lot of trouble in the states for you."
"Just out of curiosity, how long have you been in Albania?"
"Hit the ground running this afternoon. I should get into Kosovo tomorrow if I can get some help out of people like you."
He wasn’t the only one like that I ran into. For every Tina Spencer, Geoffrey York, and Anthony Germaine — for every BBC, SKY or CNN there’s at least one dork whose approach to reporting is best characterized by this actual conversation I overheard in one of the Kukes refugee camps.
Freelance Journalist to Relief Worker.
"Are there any dead kids around?"
"No."
"Why not? You had some in Somalia."
But then you also run into people like Kevin Collingly, an Australian radio reporter who said to me one night in the Bar Amerika in Kukes. “I’m starting to realize that I’m going to have to become a much better person before I can report this stuff properly. Too many people have suffered so terribly it would be wrong not to do the very best job possible of telling their stories. I don’t know if anyone is good enough.”
Table of Contents© Rick Grant 1999