How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S17, Ep3 Alex Crawford: the legendary war correspondent on staying alive, motherhood and the resilience of hope

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

If you've ever watched a television news dispatch from a warzone, the chances are you've seen Alex Crawford in a flak jacket and helmet, doing a piece to camera punctuated by the whistle of bullets. For 30 years, she has been the special correspondent for Sky News and has covered conflicts in Libya, Syria and the Ukraine. She has scooped multiple Baftas and Emmys for her work, as well as being the only journalist to have won the Royal Television Society’s Journalist of the Year Award five times.Today, she joins me in an extraordinary interview to reveal how she does it. We talk about professional failures, imposter syndrome, what happened when she got taken hostage in Afghanistan, the challenge of keeping a sense of optimism about human nature and how she processes the trauma she witnesses. She talks frankly about being a mother-of-four and how this has led to her own personal conflicts while reporting on the global ones. And we discuss how ageism and sexism plays a part in how she's perceived in the notoriously fickle world of television.I adored this conversation and I adored this woman. An absolute legend.--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [e-mail]--Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpodAlex Crawford @alexcrawfordsky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Alex Crawford is the special correspondent for Sky News. During her 30-year career, she has reported on dangerous conflicts in the Gulf, the Middle East and Libya, as well as covering the Arab Spring uprisings and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where she was the first UK TV journalist to conduct an interview with President Zelensky. Crawford has been arrested, detained, abducted, interrogated and faced live bullets, tear gas, IEDs and mortar shells. And yet none of this has put her off from her life's mission to seek out the truth and to tell it.

She grew up as a global citizen. Her parents, Emma, who worked for a construction company, and Max, a civil engineer, met in Nigeria and had spells living in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Their daughter had experienced two coups by the age of five, but Crawford recalls her childhood as fantastic, full of sport and sunshine. After school in England, she started out in local journalism on the Wokingham Times before making the leap to television, joining Sky News when it launched in 1989. Since then, she has become the only journalist to have won the Royal Television Society's

Journalist of the Year award five times. She has also won four BAFTAs and three Emmys. In an interview with the Press Gazette in 2014, Crawford said she saw her role as crucial in correcting the wrongs and the untruths, uncovering the reality, and perhaps most critical of all, calling out the lies on every occasion tirelessly. Stay silent, letting this one pass, failing to speak out are not options. Alex Crawford, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. That was honestly one of the most inspiring introductions I've ever had the privilege of preparing. I thought that quote that I ended on was so strong and impressive. so strong and impressive. And I wonder where you can date that determination from, that determination to call out lies and injustice. I don't think there's a date, but I think I grew up in an

untypical household. And there was quite a strong sense of looking back of injustice in where I was living and how we were living and where we were living. So, you know, my first childhood memories, even though I started off in Nigeria, my actual memories were in Zambia, which had just got its independence, but we were crossing over to Zimbabwe, which was then Rhodesia,

because they didn't have one person, one vote at that time. It was very segregated still. And it was a sort of mini apartheid that we saw later in South Africa or was ongoing in South Africa at that time. There was lots of injustice all around. Yeah, I saw quite a lot of that. And I think that at the time I wasn't thinking, oh, this is a burning injustice.

I must dedicate the rest of my life. But it made a big impact, big impact. So even when you were a child, was it because your parents were talking about it that you were aware of it? My parents were very anti-moving to South Africa, which is where a lot of people did move to when the war was going on between Rhodesia, it then was and all its neighbours and South Africa. So it first began, there was obviously turmoil in Rhodesia because they sent us to boarding school because we lived in a very small area which only had two tiny schools and they were very keen on us to get an education. So they sent us to boarding school. And the nearest place was Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia. And the only people who were allowed to cross the border at that time were schoolchildren.

So we'd go in these huge, big buses. And at the border, you'd have men with guns. They'd go through all of our stuff, all our cases and trunks and everything, because they thought we were being used to smuggle weapons and being used as a cover for other things. There were lots of things that happened at school that showed that we were on the one hand quite privileged on the other hand my sister and I was slightly different. We didn't come from a rich farming family we were half Chinese you know I remember the very first night at boarding school,

my sister being brought us in a huge, big dormitory of 30 girls and having to be brought to my younger sister who was crying because the girl next to her had said, I don't want to sleep next to a Chinese girl. I didn't ever feel particularly discriminated against, but these things have a big impact. And that was when I was nine. So I remember it really clearly. And I also remember just everything that we saw around us, you know, black kids being treated very differently. Everyone, as I said, when things got very difficult for schools to operate, we had terrorist drills as opposed to fire drills and things. And there was a general perception that we were going to get invaded. And that just has a big impact on a kid, I think. Fascinating. It's your mother who's Chinese, is that right?

What's so interesting about this, as I listen to it, is there are certain parallels with my upbringing in that I grew up in the north of Ireland in the 1980s at a time when there were military checkpoints and bomb scares and IRA attacks. And I got very used to seeing the aftermath of that. And my father was a surgeon and so treated a lot of people caught up in that. But I didn't become a fearless war correspondent. Actually, maybe fearless is the wrong word. I don't know whether you feel fearless. I definitely don't feel fearless. And I didn't actually choose to be a war correspondent. I think the title is a bit strange because I just think it's an odd thing to want to be.

And I don't know whether that's sort of a subconscious thing as well. Maybe it is. I didn't think I had a typical upbringing. And you do get a bit desensitized by it or maybe drawn to it or maybe both. I don't know. Our first hostile environment as a sort of young reporter was covering Northern Ireland. I've never felt fearless because a lot of the time I feel scared, but I wasn't put off from it. And I think having seen a number of other colleagues and people, they do one thing and then they decide, which is also absolutely fine. But that never, ever, ever crossed my mind. It just made it more interesting. Is it true that when you were a child, you used

to do pretend interviews with the microphone? Yeah, I did. It's so weird and geeky. And I don't even know why I did that because there were no journalists in my family, absolutely none. And I don't even know why I did it because we were living in Zambia where we didn't even have television. I have no idea where that came from but even when I was thinking at the end of school being an appallingly bad student really of what I was going to do I didn't really have any idea what I was going to do. I thought I'd be a vet or I should be a lawyer based purely based on television shows that I'd seen and it was was my mother who said, why don't you try journalism? And by that time, I'd already started the school newspaper and again, had no idea why I did it.

It was just something that interested me. And I thought it can't be a job because it's too much fun. It's almost like a vocation that was bigger than you that just drew you to it. Yeah, that sounds really grand. Love it, I'd love that. You wrote a book in 2012 called Colonel Gaddafi's Hat. Why that title? One of the big moments of covering Libya during the Arab Spring was

meeting this guy who had been inside Colonel Gaddafi's bedroom when this compound was being overrun by rebels. And at that stage, the rebels were civilians. Most of them were not army soldiers or mercenaries or anything. Most of them were civilians who just were sort of fueled by anger and resentment and wanted to topple a dictator. Sure, they were definitely helped by outside forces and outside troops and their own internal soldiers who turned. But in this case, there was this young man who came walking out and there was absolute mayhem going on with smoke and guns and

bullets and everything going on. And this rather nice looking young man comes walking out like a scene from an officer and a gentleman in midst of all the smoke wearing this pristine hat and I think he was also wearing one of Colonel Gaddafi's gold chains and his sort of paraphernalia and he looked so out of place that I had to talk to him so I immediately latched on to him and he said I've just been in Colonel Gaddafi's bedroom, got his hat. And it was like, this is crazy. And it, I think someone turned it into some sort of viral meme or tweet. And my kids saw it and they turned it into a little sort of song. And he was absolutely, he was such a character. I'm still in touch with him, actually. Are you? Yeah. The whole thing that happened to us during the coverage of that,

you know, when I'm talking to my colleagues, I say, how did any of that happen? And how did we all survive it? And how did we get through it all? If you'd written it in a book like I tried to, you just wouldn't believe it happened. There were just so many extraordinary things that happened to us. And that was one of them. And leading up to that, you were the first journalist into Tripoli, weren't you? After the fall of Gaddafi. So when you're in a situation like that, where you're surrounded by horror and surreality, how do you find the words to communicate what you're seeing to the TV audience back home? Well, most of the time I just say what I see and how it seems to me, because I think you can't really be expected to know an

awful lot about what's happening outside of that. And covering a really violent sort of ongoing situation like that, I mean, it seemed very full on to me. And it had loads of cadences, because when we first went in, I wasn't the first one in Tripoli, but I was the first one inside Green Square in this convoy of rebels, civilians, soldiers, a mixture. I mean, on the back of the pickup truck I was in, one of them was a student who studied in Britain somewhere, you know, who was half Libyan. And that feeling on that convoy was very different.

So we struggled to get a live and we managed to largely thank to my team that was nothing to do with me all I did was sit in front of the camera and say what was going on but alive being a live feed yes as sort of those days well even if you had you know your iphone it wouldn't have worked then because they cut the signal so we were using a b-gun which he normally you need to be still for. But because the convoy was going so slowly, Andy, our producer, just slowly moved it because it needs to be connected to the satellite. And so it worked. It was a very bad picture. It looked like we'd landed on the moon. But it was enough for people to see what was happening and to hear what

was happening. And you could hear all this gunfire, but it was very jolly gunfire because they were celebrating. They were thinking they were taking over. You asked me about, you know, how do you do it? I was describing what was happening in front of me and trying to put it into context because people were worried when they heard all the firing thing. Next morning, everyone thought Tripoli had fallen

and my colleagues were around the edges and saying, everyone's celebrating that. But where we were and had taken refuge overnight, there was still big fights going on. And it clearly hadn't fallen at that stage. And they then went on to storm his compound. And then it was pretty much over. But for the next couple of days, he was trying to convince people that he was still in power. I know that you must get asked this question repeatedly. So I'm going to ask it again, because I know that there'll be listeners wanting me to ask it, which is you witness so much trauma.

Where do you put it when you get home at the end of one of these manic, difficult trips where you might have feared for your own life and you might have witnessed many other people losing theirs how do you process it? I think at the beginning I struggled to process it and I found it quite hard I definitely suffered from PTSD but I got help very quickly because I couldn't actually really function but it it was in days. Some psychotherapists have flown out to see me. You know, I didn't actually really think I had PTSD, but I kept on seeing these visions that I couldn't shift. And how do I cope? Most of the time I don't talk about it because I find it reopens everything.

I put it in boxes and I shut the door in my head. And occasionally I can definitely feel stuff coming out. And it's usually when I'm talking about it. You know, I have an ongoing discussion with my children about how you shouldn't be boxing it up and you shouldn't be. I mean, I've no idea what the right way is. I just try and do it in a way where I can still function. And most of the time I don't talk about it. I'm happy to talk about it when someone asks, but most people don't ask. Do you know what I mean? And it's when I find I do have to talk about it, I can feel the anxiety rising straight away. Like I feel anxious now, even trying to explain it, even though I want to

explain it. I can feel the anxiety just rising straight away. And also I've just got to know my head better because of all of it. So I know what to avoid and how to cope with it. Obviously there's lots of things you can't avoid. I try to not subject myself to unnecessary, like, you know, war films and things like that, or even reading war books. You know, my partner gave me Marie Colvin's book and biography is a fantastic biography by Lindsay Hillson. But I just couldn't read it. I read first page and I just couldn't,

I do want to read it. I do. But I just find it too triggering, I think. Yeah. And Marie Colvin was a friend of yours. Not really a friend of mine at all, actually. She was a, it felt to me like she was a much more senior, much more experienced, much more talented, everything, much more. I obviously knew of Marie because everyone knew of Marie. And especially someone in my job, I knew of Marie because everyone knew of Marie and especially someone in my job I knew of Marie and I'd read her stuff and thought she was pretty brilliant and we crossed a couple of times but I didn't ever get to know her and when she died a week after I'd been in Syria it was absolutely shocking not I'm not saying she made a mistake but obviously she didn't intend to

get killed you expect those sort of things to happen to people who are less experienced rather than the best yes it must have felt very topsy-turvy and it was really shocking really really shocking I'm so sorry and I'm also sorry for making you talk about it. Don't worry. I'm just trying to explain it. I'm not. You did an amazing job. And I think it's really interesting, that idea that there are so many mental health campaigns about how it's good to talk. But the problem probably is, there's so much contextualizing that you would have to do to get someone even to understand a glimmer of what you've witnessed and that process must be extraordinarily exhausting and draining and it reminds me of those first world war soldiers who came back and never spoke about it because

they couldn't they couldn't convey and so actually i think sometimes maybe compartmentalization is the way to go as long as you're processing your feelings about it which I think that you are because you're self-aware enough to say I don't like to talk about it makes me anxious yeah I think everyone seems to have their own way of coping I think sometimes people think you might be making it up and I don't feel the need to explain myself. So I just do what I can to protect myself. I've taken part in a couple of talks to try and show that it's obviously, it shouldn't be a taboo and we should all talk about it, but I don't know how helpful those are. I find it really, really upsetting and I don't know whether people really gain a lot from seeing someone else cry, which is what would happen if I talked a lot about it, because it's like you take a plug out and it just goes, you know, everything just explodes. And I'm not sure that's particularly healthy it doesn't make doing my job any easier so especially doing

my job I get into focus raise a focus thing and I regularly get upset on the job but I've never got so upset that I can't do it and I don't want to be that person that doesn't get upset but it's got to be a manageable because I think the basis of being a good journalist is to be empathetic and to feel something and to know things and to spot things and to read people. I really can't do much else apart from read people. I think that's an underrated skill. Can you read yourself? Not as well as other people. I see myself, I think, in a very different way to other people. Can you read yourself? you know and they say things like oh well you must know this or you must know that and I think oh my goodness how are you getting that impression because most of the time I'm feeling very

unconfident that is fascinating and thank you for saying that because I have a hunch that actually true strength comes from admitting that I hope soitting that you don't know all the time is actually... Definitely don't know, yeah. And also I worry about people who say they do know and I get infuriated by people who bullshit because that is the one thing that I don't do and I don't like to see it in other people because I think it's misleading.

It's really misleading. So if I'm asking someone for help, tell me which way to go, what to do, what do you think is happening here? And they are just making it up or they're just surmising or they're bullshitting about how much they know when they don't know very much. That infuriates me because I don't want to know what you think you know or what someone else told you. I want to know what is actually happening. You want to know the truth. you know or what someone else told you. I want to know what is actually happening. You want to know the truth. Yeah.

In everything. Before we get on to your failures, I wanted to ask you, actually, it's so interesting that you mentioned that thing about appearing scary. Because your husband, Richard, wrote a piece. Did you know this was coming? He wrote a piece, The Independent, about what it's like being married to you. Spoiler alert. Apparently, it's pretty great. And there's a quote in it saying, there are elements of Alex's character which frighten some people, especially men, but she doesn't scare me. A point I once

made to her through a crack in the door. How interesting. You don't strike me as scary, but maybe, no, you're lovely. I'm also really surprised when people say that. But so many people say it. I think I must give out something that I don't intend to give out. But however, having said that, when I'm on the road doing something and things are going wrong or have been misled about something, I can get angry. So maybe that's the bit that they're scared of.

No, I'm just not shy and holding that's the bit that they're scared of. No, just not shy and holding back, especially when it's upsetting everyone. You know, like they've promised something and it hasn't happened, or they've said something that's not true, or they've said, I'll take you to this and then it doesn't happen. But you told me, let me just quote you, you said a hundred percent guaranteed. I remember saying this in the Niger Delta. You said 100% guaranteed and now you're saying nothing. That goes 100 to zero. How is that 100%? And it goes on and on until one of my colleagues said, can we stop shouting here?

Can we stop? He said, he literally said 100%. It's all basically don't be a bullshitter and then Alex Crawford won't have to unleash her rage final question before we move on are you more optimistic or pessimistic about humanity and human nature I think definitely optimistic that's such a really optimistic that is something I have learned I can be very worried about a story and how it's going to work and whether we're going to get it and whether we've got enough and all of that. But ultimately, I'm definitely much more optimistic

about life, humans, how things are going to turn out, whether we're going to survive, if it's going to work. That doesn't mean I don't drive my colleagues insane by saying, no, we could get more. No, we could do this. No, we should do that. Is that really interesting? Or should we be getting that? You know, yeah, I do drive them insane because I'm always looking for more and better and it never quite feels good enough. But that's different to being generally optimistic and generally thinking people are good rather than evil. Do you think that's one thing that links all wars? What, that there's more good than evil? Or just why do we have them? Largely, a lot of them are manipulated, I think, by outside players for nefarious reasons, unfortunately.

Do you think it's all ego and money? Mm-hmm. Okay. Quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And that is pretty evil. Yes. But then you get the awful things that are happening in Libya or that are continuing to happen today in Syria or in Afghanistan or Ukraine. You're always, always, always, or at least I do, and I'm pretty sure a lot of my fellow foreign correspondents do as well, you'll always find someone who really stuns you with how brave, selfless, generous with their time and what little they have. Stunning. And that is really life-affirming. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated.

And correct. You're such a Leo. All the time. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions, if you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second, then join me, Hunter Harris, and me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This.

As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise.

Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother, a mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters

and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get on to your failures. Your first one is your failure at getting nearly every job I've gone for. Your words. So yes, tell us about rejection, Alex. People say to me, how do I get into journalism? Or how do I do this? And I say, I am really not the person to ask. Because I somehow haven't managed to perfect the job interview at my grand old age. And every single job I went for, from when I first left school to,

I didn't even get the job I've got now. And I was turned down. You know, it was just, I think they gave it to me finally, because they thought, well, one, I think they thought no one else would do it. One of the producers said, okay, bye-bye, you're off to India. You'll never be on air again. We'll never hear from you again. I don't know whether that was the reason I got it, but I do know I was spectacularly bad at job interviews. I don't even know what I did wrong now.

One of the people who was interviewing me gave me a book on how to do job interviews. Wow, for Sky News? Yes. Oh, that's hilarious. The just recently departed head gave me, he said to me, it felt like I was being attacked when you came in. And I thought I was just being positive. But no, I was just really, really bad. I mean, every, when I finally got on my journalism course, my very first journalism course, entry into journalism,

I'd applied to every single newspaper that was represented on that course and been rejected by them. I wrote to every single regional newspaper in the country and didn't get on any of them. And how I got on, and this is why you remember the people who give you the breaks, was because this really nice editor who was Scottish rang me up. And I still to this day don't know what he saw in my really bad CV and then my really bad talk on the phone because he said can you come down for a chat I think I said let me just check and this is like after three million rejections and then when I got down in front of him I seemed to answer every single question wrongly he must have just thought you know what just give this one a break or something I still

don't know why then when I was applying to leave that job and go on when I was I was a senior again I couldn't get anywhere so is this the Wokingham Times yeah that was okay the editor was Adam McKinley and you know I had no idea what he saw in this gangly, inexperienced young girl who didn't know anything and sort of came out of the loo regularly with her zip down at the back and forgot things like her notepad and pen, which was the only thing you actually had in those days. So I don't really know what he saw, but I'm so glad he gave me the break. And did you enjoy it when you were doing it? At first I didn't. It was a bit like every job I've done because I felt inadequate and that everyone else was much more senior, which they were, and knew much more, which they did. But those starting moments are really, really, really important. I felt I had such a struggle. I try

and help the young ones that reach out to me because I think no one helped me really, apart from my editor, who gave me the first job. And then when I entered that newspaper, I realised I was in a group that it was very small and they wanted everyone to succeed. And those lessons are just really important lessons, really important lessons. Alex Crawford, do you have imposter syndrome? Possibly, I think, because I still question myself and my instincts, even though I know my instincts are really good. I'm a great believer in instinct, and that's kind of how I've always operated.

But if you've got the slightest bit of doubt, it's hard to convince someone else on just the basis of an instinct. Yes. I go on instinct. I thrive on instinct. I've learned to trust myself with my instinct. Of course, you never quite know when you've responded to an instinct and it's gone right that it's because of the instinct or because of something else. And you'll never know when you decide not to do a job,

which I have done just based on instinct. Sometimes I find that I'm also a big believer in instinct, but sometimes I find it can be difficult to tune into and to separate what my instinct is and what my anxiety is. Yeah, I think that can be confusing for some, but I always go on my instinct is and what my anxiety is. Yeah, I think that can be confusing for some, but I always go on my instinct. Do you have a way of tapping into it or it just is there? Well, my instinct, no, it's just there.

It's not like a supernatural thing. I think obviously it's got stronger and more developed based on what I've done and the experiences I've had. But even right at the start, if it didn't feel right, I did certain things or I got out or I reacted in a certain way. I mean, there was one time in Afghanistan, and again, you won't know if this would have turned into anything really bad, but it was the first time I'd gone generally everywhere on my own because they didn't want men and they didn't want a cameraman. And this was the

first time I'd taken a cameraman. So we'd gone with my Afghan interpreter. We went to interview the Taliban. And when we got there, they took us into a room and it was a completely windowless room and it had their flag set up at the end. And they led us in and there was a camera in front of the flag. Oh my God. Yeah. and there was a camera in front of the flag. Oh my God. Yeah. And they shut the door and locked the door.

And my Afghan colleagues started praying straight away. And they left us in there for what seemed like a long time. And we were all sort of thinking, okay, what? This was during the international occupation of Afghanistan. Anyway, they came in wearing balaclavas and holding guns and they sat down in front of us. And I mean, I think it was fairly obvious thought that this isn't going well. The meeting was meant to be them giving an insight into their bombs and what they were doing and showing how they could operate in the center of Kabul and all of this sort of thing. And this didn't smell very good at all. And so he sat down, the main guy, but they were all wearing balaclavas and stuff, which actually was quite unusual. And I just

didn't even wait for them to talk. I just started laying into, how dare you treat us like this? You know, would you treat your mother like this? Would you treat your sister like this? We trusted you. You said you were going to do this, that and the other. And my Afghan interpreter was like, what? Okay. And then he started, I said, just tell them what I'm saying. And so he started saying, and they just started shifting around uncomfortably. And then next minute we were out. And I was saying how dare you've let us down you've wasted our time you're meant to be showing us this that and the other and you've you've wasted our time and they kind of like shuffled around and said uh okay we'll try and organize it some other time

and took us out and that was it that's so clever of you and I I didn't feel clever it felt like I was just oh my god, this is a chance and I've just got to take it. Do you feel that appeal to, so that thing that you said, would you treat your own mother like this? Is that a necessary? Yeah, because I want to make them think of me as a human and preferably as something they know,

not this crazy foreigner who's coming. I think being a woman definitely helped in those circumstances. It helped a lot. Is it true that you were told time and time again to give up trying from your close friends to try and get a foreign posting? I was like, because most of the time you'd expect your close friends to be. Every time I was absolutely devastated when I got turned down. I mean, I got turned down a spectacular number of times at Sky when I was trying to be a foreign correspondent. And, you know, I got turned down so many times

it was almost embarrassing going for the interview, or at least that's what my friends thought. Every time I got turned down, they kept saying, one of my closest friends said, do you not think maybe they're trying to tell you something? You know, maybe they, maybe they just don't want you to be foreign correspondent. I said, yeah, maybe. No, no, I'm sure they do. This is just a test. oh no, I'm sure they do. This is just a test. It was quite difficult to keep going, but I think this whole sort of burning sense of injustice really came in because each time I thought I should have got it. There was about, there was about any one time, the very first one I thought, I'm not sure I'm ready for this job. But after that, I thought, you know what? I can do this job.

What the fuck? You know, I think it was about the third time they took me to one side and I was just shaking my head and they said, why are you so surprised? And I said, I don't know what I've got to do to convince you guys I can do this job. I mean, what do you want me to do? And then I launched into a rant

about how much energy I had than all those single white guys out there. And I think, oh my God, it must have been their worst nightmare. Do you think they were underestimating you as a woman? I think they were generally underestimating me full stop. I don't know whether it's because I was a woman, but that might have played into it. Also that by that stage I had four children.

I mean, I was just back from maternity leave. I think she was like just over a year old. I mean, I regularly went for the jobs, but I'm sure that must have played into the thinking as well. I mean, to be fair, it probably would play into mine as well if I was now employing someone who had four children. But I hope I'd think differently. I don't know. I mean, I think, but maybe I hope I'd think differently. I don't know. I mean, I think it's a shame that I came to it so late because I feel like it's a job that does require quite a lot of energy and youthful sort of enthusiasm.

And that's what, you know, as I was saying to you before, I still feel and think and act like I'm 23, but maybe that's trying to convince myself it works. How old are you? wow you look amazing not that that's relevant but honestly I would never you're 60 I had no idea the thing is I constantly think that there's been some sort of mistake and I'm not really that age because as I say um I have a emotional maturity of a mostly younger than my own children. I don't feel that age.

And I actually, like when I was in Ukraine and talking to invariably much older people who were left behind in these nearly taken over, just about to be encircled towns. And I was talking to my colleagues saying, oh, my God, that woman's, let's go and talk to this old woman. And then I'd say at the end of it, so how old are you? And they'd say something like 59 or 58 or 60. And I'd come away saying, Jesus, that poor old lady, hang on, I'm the same age. And yeah, and they'd laugh. I don't feel old. I don't feel old. I don't think old. I feel like I've spent my life having to cope with various things.

I'm sure other women are going through as well. I mean, like when you're young, they don't treat you seriously because you're young. You're a woman or a girl. You know, they think you're about to get married or have children and you struggle to be taken seriously by anyone because you invariably don't know as much as all the way. And then you go through the baby stage possibly. And there, even if you're not having children, they think you are about to have children or you are having children and you're written off for that. And then immediately after that, you're thrown aside because you're old and it's

like what the hell when do we get a break in all of this yes when do we when do we yeah when is it feels and now I feel like I'm constantly being written off because of the age thing and I find that really really weird really strange, there's constant references to age. I think one of the papers even did, I wouldn't have taken part in this, but I slightly found out halfway through the interview that it was a piece on how there were so many older female correspondents covering Ukraine or something.

And it's like, what? You're not doing that for John Simpson, are you? And they were questioning, yeah, I know. It's like, I went to see, because I'd rarely come to London very much now, and I saw a David Hockney exhibition. He went through the ages, and he is my inspiration. I'm going to be the female journalistic equivalent of him.

He's 84. He's now doing his paintings on iPads and using GoPros. And it's just like he's developed. He's the same artist, 84, still got this incredible youthful energy and taking on all these innovative ways of doing his craft. And that's how I want to be. Ditto. I think the secret is being engaged with the world

and with the new things rather than dismissing them as something you don't understand. And for what it's worth, you don't seem your age at all. And I don't think of you in that way whatsoever. Thank you. So no more writing off. I think there are some women who do categorize other women. Yes.

But it's mostly men. It's definitely men. Yeah. They want to deny us our power. Yeah. They do. Unfortunately. And the thing is, if you say things like that, they get a bit twitchy because you get moved

into a sort of, oh, ranting, feminist, ranting, you know. And I sort of think, on no there comes a time when you have to actually say what's what and I'm getting really pissed off with being constantly written off or constantly categorized or constantly boxed I'm not just banging on for older women because I as I said it happened to me when I was younger and when I was in the middle of child rearing it was being seen as a child breeder type thing so I'm pretty sure that's happening all the time exactly you're totally right and I'd actually never thought about it in that articulate a way that literally every phase we're at there's a reason to dismiss us yeah yeah I'm excited for this new iteration of Alex Crawford.

Your second failure is getting taken hostage in Afghanistan. What year was this and what happened? I think it was 2006. We had gone and managed to get through a very strong Pakistani contact and in with what was then described as a terror group, very closely aligned or working with the Taliban. I'd done several already with various arms of the Taliban. And the big discussion was them running training camps in parts of the Afghanistan countryside. So I wanted to show that. So I wanted to stay there for a few nights. That was probably mistake number one, because you should probably should not stay in a place too long. And I stayed there with my team, which was just a cameraman and Afghan colleague. That night was a bit crazy because

we were in this room packed full of gunmen. and they were all taking pictures of me on the mobile phone. And it was literally like being stripped by a mobile phone. So they were giggling and sort of filming me like this. And the commander was just watching it and giggling and then finally said, stop, stop. So they stopped. And it felt quite edgy, but I was in constant contact with my Pakistani contact.

After we'd been and seen all of this for a couple of days, the commander said, you've been spotted. I think you should go. And the trip was slightly cut short because we were meant to stay a bit longer. And actually at that stage, I should have been much more alert to the danger than I actually was. I was more annoyed that the trip was being cut short because we were getting really good access and seeing them doing their training. But I contacted my colleagues, two other colleagues who were in Kabul waiting for us to come out. And I said, the trip's been cut short. There's a suggestion that something might happen on the way out, But I honestly didn't really take it seriously. And that was probably a big mistake. I should have raised the alarm big time. Instead, I just casually mentioned it to my colleagues who'd stayed in Kabul and were just there to just check that everything went all right, but no real concern. So we left early the next morning, and they took us to the edge of their territory.

And after that, they sort of waved and said goodbye, and that was it. I then sent a message to my colleagues, say, everything's fine, see, everything's fine. We'll see you in 20 minutes in the original meeting point. And then as we drove down, I saw these people who I recognized as intelligence people. And I remembered ringing my Pakistan contact saying, are these your guys?

Because they seem to be in a car in front. And what's going on? And he replied straight away saying, nothing to do with us. And again, I didn't do anything. I didn't react. I told my cameraman colleague to hide the thing but we'd done that anyway so I had various cards in my bra and things I said film out the window so they if someone stops us we'd already pre-arranged this but we weren't expecting to be stopped then we

get into town and again 10 minutes along because it all happened very quickly the explanation takes much longer than what was actually how long it took at the time we get into town and suddenly cars come out one's jammed in front of us one jumps behind there's lots of armed guys but they're not Taliban it's in the middle of a town the doors are flung open and guns are pointed in. The guy just looks at me and he's expecting me to be there. And he says, give me your phone. And I was like, okay. And he said, and the other one. Okay.

And I said, what's happening? He said, get out the car, come in with us. So we left the car, got into this other car with them. And they drive off and they take us to this big building. And I'm thinking thinking what is this and we get into the building and when we're in the building we get taken to a room they hand us our phones the first thing they do is talk to my colleague cameraman and the Afghan interpreter is having an absolute meltdown at this point he He's talking to my colleague, asking him to open his phone. He hands mine to me to open it.

And as I open it, I quickly send a message to Neville saying, taken by intelligence. And he says, open it, show me what you've got on your phone. My colleague had pictures, still pictures of us with this terror group. So he's trying to find what's going on. And I'm saying straight away, because I didn't know who this guy was, had no idea who he was, but we were in an office. And I said straight away that we were British journalists, that my office was waiting for us. Could I ring my office? And he said, no, no, it's okay. We'll ring them. What

number is it? And I gave the number. We showed our credentials. He was going on about how we were operating illegally and what were we doing, and we shouldn't be taking pictures of terror groups like the Taliban or consorting with any of them, blah, blah, blah. And he wanted to have all our pictures. And I was wondering, I didn't really know what was going on, but again, it didn't feel right,

because I thought if he is who he is, my office would have been notified because they were waiting 20 minutes down the road. So I went to the loo. As I went to the loo, I had to go through an office and I could see he was the head of the Afghan intelligence, which there were always lots of reports about how compromised they were and how corrupt they were and how they were double dealing so they'd be working with the international troops but they would be also keeping a hand in with the Taliban guys I thought if I leave them behind I'm going to lose all the pictures that we've done if I keep them with me what and it gets really bad it's the cards of the photo cards yeah all the pictures that we've done over the last three days which you know was

really unprecedented sort of access to how they were operating and laying IEDs and building bombs and doing training camps and basically just running amok in the countryside it went on for quite a while we were there for eight hours I think it was and I kept on asking and saying I'm meant to be meeting the British ambassador my colleagues and all this time nothing was happening and I thought this definitely isn't right because if they were genuine we'd have been out by now you know because we were genuine journalists and we hadn't been doing anything wrong anyway so then he says okay we're going to move you now we're going to drive you to Kabul. And I again thought, this isn't right because we don't need a lift to Kabul.

Why is he taking us all the way to Kabul? During the course of the questioning, a couple of people came in the room. And one of them was a woman who was giving us tea. And I remember her looking at me strangely and thinking, I wonder who she is. But I looked at her directly as well. And I noticed her looking at me strangely and thinking, I wonder who she is, but I looked at her directly as well and I noticed her looking at me really intently. Someone comes in, whispers in his ear and he leaves the room and we don't hear anything.

We're wondering what's going on. And then my colleague looked out of the window and he said, there are American military vehicles coming outside. I looked out and there was a whole string of them. I'm thinking, what the hell? And next minute the door bursts open and there's this huge, big American Marine standing there saying, Alex, Skylott, come with me.

And we were sort of, what the hell? And we were bundled into the APC and driven to the American base, which was very close, where they gave us a debrief. And then it all sort of came out that my colleagues, Neville and Stuart, Neville had got my message and tried to ring back and rang all our phones and none of it went through. So then immediately started the search, going house to house around the area where we were meant to be meeting

because he knew we had already communicated. He knew we couldn't be far. Then they went to the American base, the nearest American base, and said two British journalists have... And I look back and I think, if they hadn't been there, I don't know what would have happened. The Americans told me what they thought would happen. They said that this guy had been under their investigation for quite a long time. They thought he was selling anyone that he could get, usually foreign journalists, to Taliban groups, because at that stage they were being held for a while and various countries would pay ransoms. Britain was not paying a ransom, but there were Italians and French. He'd got two people working inside who verified. rang up asked two British

journalists gone missing in the area do you know anything about them and they'd rung up twice and each time they said no no not at all so then they turned up having been got these insiders giving them yes there's a woman and a man who look like foreigners and they're in the office they turned up they then asked to speak to him directly and that's when he left our room the American soldiers by this stage who had all their guns out and everything said we think there are two British journalists in here somehow in this building and he again said no there's no British journalists I promise you we've got no British journalists here and apparently the American guy told us that he then cocked his gun and said, I'm going to search every single room in this building until I find them. We can either do this the easy way or the hard way. And the guy then just led

him to the room. Do you think it was the tea lady then? Yeah. She definitely ID'd us and passed it on. And so you could have been held hostage for years and years and years. Yeah, that's what it looked like. And so the reason that you have chosen this particular episode, I imagine, for this podcast, is that it highlights when you need to make the call. I think it highlights how you can contribute to the mistakes, perhaps by not responding quickly enough or not realizing the danger. Even when we were being interrogated, it was done in a way where they tried to keep you calm so that you don't think that things have gone wrong.

And that's when your instincts should be screaming at you. And actually they were by that point, but I thought my mistake was they should have screamed a lot earlier. I should have laid plans to make sure that there was a gap between being dropped off and being picked up by my colleagues. And that was the big gap.

In retrospect, I don't think I'd make that mistake again. I'd be much more alert, much more alert to possible things going wrong. I can put up with a certain amount of things going wrong, and that's fine, because I think you need to expect certain things to possibly go wrong. You've got to think of absolutely everything that could go wrong and try and narrow that down and shut it off and cut it off. thing that could go wrong and try and narrow that down and shut it off and cut it off that was the most extreme at that time the most extreme example of mistakes I made but I think it laid the foundation for other things not to go quite so badly as wrong as they could do you acquired the

necessary data I think so but how difficult as well when someone is deliberately trying to keep you calm you're almost being gaslit about the entire situation. It's just so confusing. Yeah, and even when I came out, I think my editors, my colleagues, and everyone found it hard to believe that I'd just spent three or four days with the outlaws and been taken by the people that they were working with.

It was a very difficult thing i remember talking to my editor at the time and saying hang on are you saying afghan intelligence took you i was saying yeah these are the guys they're working with when you get taken back by the american soldiers what do you do that night with your colleagues? Like, is there a celebration? That night I got drunk. I was about to say, I hope you got drunk. My colleague that I was with found it very, very, very, very hard. Very hard. He went the other way. And I think after that, he found it very difficult to do

any more hostile environments. Very, very, very talented cameraman. Very nice guy. Probably a lot more sensitive than. Very, very, very talented cameraman, very nice guy, probably a lot more sensitive than I am possibly. But I came out of that, even when we were in the base, in the US base, I was thinking, whew, that was a lucky escape. And he was thinking, Jesus, we were nearly spending God knows how many years chained to a radiator or whatever. I think that is also a really valuable lesson. And I don't even know if you have control over it.

I don't know because I'm sure given the option, everyone would want to think positively rather than the worst. And that tends to be my pattern of thinking is not, whoa, that was so freaking close. We could have X, Y, Z, we could have happened. This is after something has happened. It's much more, whoa, jeez, that's another life that I've used up. I tend to think of the worst before we go on it. And then I try. So like before we went into Ukraine, I had, I don't know what my, my colleagues must've been thought, who is this crazy? But I sat my team down and said, you know, we don't have to go into Kiev. This is before when they thought it was going to be under siege.

We're being asked if we want to go to Kiev, you need to know what could happen. We could be there for months. What, how are you going to feel if we get taken hostage? How are you going to feel if one of us gets shot? How are you going to feel if you see me being raped? How are you going to feel if we get taken hostage? How are you going to feel if one of us gets shot? How are you going to feel if you see me being raped? How are you going to cope? How are you going to tell Richard if I die? Are you prepared for all of that? Because I wanted them to go in with their eyes wide open,

and I didn't want them to think that it was not going to be the very worst case scenario. And, of course, none of that happened. But we went into it preparing for that, with that mindset. With that degree of psychological preparation, have you ever had a moment where, as the saying goes, that your life has flashed before your eyes? Quite a lot of the time, it's so quick, you don't have time for that. Like when we got shelled in Syria, I was terrified and I was running and I knew we had to run. And somehow we had to have lots of strength to get out and get ahead of the shelling that was coming behind us because there was a drone that spotted us and had already dropped a bomb that they thought was going to kill us. And it didn't. And under the cover of the clouds,

kill us and it didn't and under the cover of the clouds the smoke that it created we then ran and they then shelled some more and we had to keep on running that adrenaline just fueled my legs because you know normally it's really hard to be running with and a buyer on and a flat jacket and all of the things that we had but somehow we did. But other times when it's a bit slower, like when I got, my team got trapped inside a mosque when there was raging gunfire and tanks right outside on the other side of this wall, there'd be boom tank. And you thought we're going to die. And we had plenty of time to think that we were going to die. And we couldn't think how we were going to get out. And everyone else was being time to think that we were going to die. We couldn't think how we were going to get out. And everyone else was being injured and dying and mutilated. That's what it

seemed like to us. So did my life flash in front of me? It didn't really flash in front of me, but I thought we're probably not going to get out of this. We're probably going to die. I think everyone in that moment thought that. It just seemed very, very bleak. I'm sure in those moments, you think of your husband, Richard, and your four children, which brings us on to your final failure. And I'm extremely grateful that you've chosen to talk about this. And it is in your words that you have failed as a mother many times. words that you have failed as a mother many times? Yeah, I think I definitely have. I think I'm really, really lucky to be a mother and to have my children and to have a family and they're incredibly valuable to me. I feel like they've been my safe foundations. There are lovely places that I like to go to, but it's my family I run back to.

I mean, we have a very dysfunctional family because they've led very unpredictable, weird lives. Just their whole childhood has been very weird. It just hasn't been typical. And I felt guilty about that, dragging them from country to country and being away a lot of the time and constantly feeling like I wanted to be a good mother, but I also wanted to be a really good journalist. And I often felt I was failing at both. I think if there were awards for motherhood, I wouldn't be getting as many awards for motherhood because I felt like I've let them all down quite a lot of times and also that you know there's so many things that I've missed and I remember at the time Richard saying you're going to really regret being away so much when they're so young and poo-pooing all of that and actually now I do regret it I do regret quite a lot I wish I had two lives that would be the

solution yes so so many things I want to say so your children are now all in their 20s you've got I do regret quite a lot. I wish I had two lives. That would be the solution. Yes. So, so many things I want to say. So your children are now all in their 20s. You've got three daughters and a son, right? But maybe you will have that experience of being around when children are younger as a grandmother. And maybe that could be the second iteration of your life. And actually, I'm a firm believer that we have all lived many lives. And I'm not a mother in this lifetime, although I have tried. And I think maybe I was a mother in the past, and it's okay. I know about your past struggles, and that makes me feel even more guilty. No, don't feel guilty. And can I also say how refreshing it is to hear someone talk about motherhood and their guilt around it, prefacing with I love being a mother how beautiful is this family who are my safe haven

that's so wonderful to hear you acknowledge that and I never want other people to feel guilty for what they have simply because something that I've yearned for hasn't happened for me because I have lots of other things as well. And it's my life's path. I didn't intend to make you feel in any way anything particularly. I know people, I've had friends who've had difficulty and one of them wrote really movingly a book about it. And I just felt so bad for her because I remember her saying everywhere she looked she could just see pregnant women. And I took it a bit for granted. You know, I feel bad about that,

but sometimes I feel like I haven't been there for my kids when I should have been. You know, I remember even in the maternity hospital having to ask how to put a nappy on because I didn't know how to do it. I didn't think anything through with my life. I thought it'd be great to have children. I didn't think about the implications of how they might need me and how I should be there and how they still need you when they're in their 20s. They probably need me more now than they did when they were two, four, six and eight or whatever. I remember at the time we struggled to ever get them to school on time. I struggled to remember or to even know what classes they were in.

I remember when we got one report from one school in one country that we'd been in because they did a report and those reports went on to the next school in the next country to say what we were like. And the report about our parenting was that completely absent or something and it felt like f for fail um and I'm not saying that with any pride I was like oh my god what are they like now in terms of I mean I'm immensely proud of them yeah I think they all have issues but I think I said, we are a very dysfunctional family.

They've been dragged around the world. They've watched their mother do these crazy things, which they're sort of half proud of. I think they're more proud of me now. In those days, when they were small, they just didn't like me being away. And they thought I was having lots of fun. I remember one of them saying where do you go when you leave us do you go to the playground because I always seem so happy going and that's that isn't that that's so I just but you know what Alex this wouldn't even be a conversation if you were a father how many fathers would sit in this chair and agonize and choose this as a failure? And we live in an imperfect world and not all fathers, not all men mothers are different to fathers, definitely. And it doesn't matter how you try and convince yourself

you are the same or interchangeable or whatever. And, you know, you're just not, I don't think. You offer very different things as a mother. My own relationship with my parents was not at all like mine is with my children. But I had a much closer relationship with my mother than my father. But my kids have an entirely different relationship with me to the one I had with my mother. I mean, they talk to me about pretty much everything. And they can't understand why I don't want to talk about absolutely everything

because that's the way they are. As I say, I feel very lucky because I'm learning all the time from them. Yes. I hope they picked up a few things from me, but I'm pretty sure it's... Of course they have. I don't know. Maybe it's... One of the things I can think of, of the myriad of qualities that you embody, is that you're not judgmental, that they clearly feel they

can tell you anything because of the things that you've seen and witnessed and because you in turn have provided them with a safe harbour, emotionally speaking. I don't know, you see. I don't know whether it's because of that. There's probably a little bit of, well, maybe quite a lot of lingering resentment about me not being there enough, not giving them the safe harbour that they probably wanted and needed and demanded. I don't really know the answers. I just know, looking back, if I had the chance to redo things, I'd probably do a lot of things differently. When I'm talking to younger journalists now, the thing that I emphas emphasize, I'm not sure they listen to me much

because they think, well, you did it. But I say, don't miss out on your kids. Make sure that you spend time with them. When a fellow female colleague was away for months, weeks in Ukraine, she was there for weeks. And I sent her an email saying, you've been there too long. You need to get back to your family. And I remember one of my foreign editors telling me that when I was covering something in Sri Lanka a while ago. And I'd been there for a long time. And he also rang me up and said, you know what? You've been there long enough.

Get back. And actually, you need people like that sometimes to tell you, especially when you're not realizing. Because every job you go into, I think a lot of the very focused journos just get, they can't think of anything else. And I know I'm like that. And so you need someone to sort of say, you know what, time to go. Time to get a reality check and normality.

Are you proud of your career? Am I proud? In some ways that sounds like it's over and I feel I'm only just starting. I didn't mean it. No I know you don't. I know you don't. I think I get some satisfaction in having proved a few people wrong along the way. I would be lying if I said otherwise. That has been very satisfying. So, you know, every time I picked up an RTS, I thought, yeah, that's for all those guys out there who thought I'd never do it. Alex Crawford, thank you so much for proving them all wrong

and for continuing to do so. And thank you for coming on How to Fail. Oh, thanks for inviting me. If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently it helps other people know that we exist.