The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward The recipient of multiple Peabody and Murrow awards, Clarissa Ward is a world-renowned conflict reporter. In this strange age of crisis where there really is no front line, she has moved from one hot zone to the next. With multiple assignments in Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan, Ward, who speaks seven languages, has been based in Baghdad, Beirut, Beijing, and Moscow. She has seen and documented the violent remaking of the world at close range. With her deep empathy, Ward finds a way to tell the hardest stories. On All Fronts is the riveting account of Ward’s singular career and of journalism in this age of extremism. Following a privileged but lonely childhood, Ward found her calling as an international war correspondent in the aftermath of 9/11. From her early days in the field, she was embedding with marines at the height of the Iraq War and was soon on assignment all over the globe. But nowhere does Ward make her mark more than in war-torn Syria, which she has covered extensively with courage and compassion. From her multiple stints entrenched with Syrian rebels to her deep investigations into the Western extremists who are drawn to ISIS, Ward has covered Bashar al-Assad’s reign of terror without fear. In 2018, Ward rose to new heights at CNN and had a son. Suddenly, she was doing this hardest of jobs with a whole new perspective. On All Fronts is the unforgettable story of one extraordinary journalist—and of a changing world. Clarissa Ward is CNN's chief international correspondent based in London. For more than 15 years Ward has reported from front lines across the world from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen to Ukraine to Georgia -- during the Russian incursion in 2008 -- and Iran. Named 2019 Reporter/Correspondent of the Year by the Gracies, she is the author of the upcoming book, 'On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist' (Penguin Press), that details her singular career as a conflict reporter and how she has documented the violent remaking of the world from close range.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like. Subscribe to us on YouTube. If you want to watch the video version of this, you can see all that on youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can also see the new book club that we started on Goodreads. You can follow me on goodreads.com under Chris Voss. And we're now, of all the places we're syndicated all over the world, we're now on Amazon Music, the Chris Voss show is syndicated. So if you want to listen to us there, you can as well. We have some of the most excellent guests on this week. This week, we have Molly Ball from Time Magazine, and we have Peter Strzok. You may have heard of him.

He's the ex-FBI gentleman. He was quite popular with Donald Trump's tweets. And today, we have the most brilliant CNN international correspondent for CNN, Clarissa Ward. And she's here with her book, On All Fronts, The Education of a Journalist. I've been getting the chance to read that baby, and it is pretty nice. Clarissa is the CNN's chief international correspondent. She's based in London. For more than 15 years, she has reported from the front lines

across the world, from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, to Ukraine, to Georgia during the Russian incursion in 2008, and Iran. She was named the 2019 Reporter Correspondent of the Year by the Gracies. She is the author of the book that we just mentioned, and it details her singular career as a conflict reporter and how she has documented the violent remaking of the world from close range. Welcome to the show, Clarissa. How are you? I'm well, Chris. Thank you so much for having me on.

Awesome sauce, and I highly recommend the book. Everyone should check it out. Where's the best place to pick up the book, Clarissa? I mean, I'm a big fan of supporting your local bookstore, but you can get it pretty much anywhere from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever you want, Kindle, Audible. I actually narrated it myself. Oh, there you go. I love it when authors narrate their own books because it, to me, just seems more personal, like they're telling their story. When someone does it, it's a little disaffected. So I just want to give a plug out to Lee Rother.

He's one of our audience. And this is the first thing we got when we posted about your book, Clarissa. He writes, I am halfway through reading On All Fronts, and I have a problem. I don't want it to end. And then he talks about spending several occasions in Jordan, the West Bank, and so you brought back a lot of his memories. And he says, thank you for your book. When is the next one?

So there's the pressure. They already want a next one from you. So that's pretty darn good, I thought. That makes me very happy. There you go. So give us a rundown on what motivated you to want to write this book. So I was pregnant with my first son, uh, about two and a half years ago. And I sort of had this moment of realizing that it was going to be so difficult

for him to understand in the future, uh, who I am outside of being mommy, obviously, and what I've done and experiences I've had and places I've been. And sure, I'm sure we'll talk about it at the dinner table sometimes, but I really wanted to write a letter to him, sort of outlining all these experiences I'd had and kind of paving the way for his future as well. And I wrote a couple of chapters and my agent, Binky Urban, read them and said, these are great, but there's a lot of cursing and death. And I think it reads a little odd that this is a letter to like a baby.

So we ended up changing the format a little bit and it was no longer a letter to my son. But what I realized as I was writing it was that essentially it's a love letter to journalism. And it's also a thank you letter to all the people who I have crossed paths with along the way. And all these moments that happen, Chris, like behind the camera, there's so much that you guys don't get to see on the evening news, whether it's these small acts of kindness or moments of laughter or cruelty or hatred or, you know, an incredible vista, you know, there's so many things you don't get to share. And those really are the moments that tend to shape the way we think of a culture or conflict or people in far flung corners of the earth. And so I really wanted to have a way to sort of thank all of those people and to make it clear how much my journey has been shaped by by their generosity and their influence that's awesome uh my mom wrote a

lot of letters to me so i think that's just beautiful when she was pregnant with me and and she she gives them to me and she goes you're probably gonna read them you know that but that's beautiful uh and uh you know maybe you might want to read some of those death stories at the crib you know when they're in and there's one time mommy anyway uh but give us an overview of what the book's about and uh what's in it so the book is really it's a memoir which always i think sounds very presumptuous at the ripe old age of 40 to be like, I have penned my memoir. But there it is. And it starts off very briefly with my childhood and college and then getting to the point where I decide to become a journalist after 9-11 and really tracks my career.

I was based for many years between Beirut and Baghdad and then in Moscow and then in Beijing. So I've had the great privilege of living in so many different and wonderful places. And then there comes a point where I start covering the Syrian civil war, which I think is really where I came into my own as a journalist and certainly became incredibly passionate about a story in a way that I hadn't ever been before, though I had certainly cared about other stories. And then inevitably getting that involved in a conflict takes an emotional toll as well. And so I do talk about that a bit because I think it's really important to

address that. We don't really talk about it a lot in my industry. It's still a bit of a taboo. And then it kind of ends, I guess, where I am now, which is having children and the fears that hard charging career women go through when they have kids and the ways in which it changes you for the better. And so yeah, that's, that's the rough arc. There you go. There you go. It's definitely an adventure story because you tell all the stories of you going to these places, and you really unpack the details of what goes into it. Like you mentioned earlier, people see it on the evening news,

and usually by the time it's being delivered by the anchors, and the anchors are wonderful people. We've had Jim Schuto on the show. He's a super nice guy. It's kind of sanitized, and you get the 15-second blurb. Here's this story. Here's that story. And it goes by people as they're uh passing through their lives and stuff but you

guys and in the book you get in the real detail of of how what it takes to package this up what your daily life is like you know i think a lot of people just get this impression that as journalists or reporters you guys just run up to someone on the street and you're like hey man tell us your story okay thanks bye and it's not that simple, right? No, it's not that simple. And I think also there's a tendency when you look at the finished product, it'll look so polished, right? So you're like, you don't realize the blood, sweat and tears that goes into creating that piece of reportage. I mean, we're talking like months of research, sometimes weeks of shooting, sleeping on floors, crossing through borders in the dead of night, illegally sort of

shimmying through mud, let alone being in very dangerous situations where artillery is falling and bombs are dropping and bullets are whizzing by. So there is so much effort and work that goes into putting together the final product, which is, frankly, it's obviously a rough portrayal of what's happened and what's happening around you, but it only tells a fraction of the story. And the whole point with this book, and I hope, well, Chris, you're obviously something of a news junkie, but what I would hope is that people who are not necessarily news junkies, who are not deeply knowledgeable about Syria's civil war, will still be able to read this. It's very deliberately readable. And yes, you're going

to learn something about the Syrian civil war, but even if that doesn't particularly interest interest you i think you're going to be able to connect to it on just a human level yeah and you tell the story of how you grow up as a as a young girl you're a single child i'm a first child so i kind of know what being a first child is all about but i wasn't a single one i tried to make myself a single one a couple times but uh you know uh fortunately they lived uh but they're nice people uh so but you kind of i it seems like somewhere in your growing up and being you and and you're moving between london and new york and you kind of get this adventurous streak maybe yeah i think it taught me you know it's some you know there's a lot of talk at the moment about like third culture kids right and this idea of like you can fit in anywhere, but you don't really belong anywhere. And so because I was half British and half American, and my accent to this day, don't even get me started, it swings back and forth wildly, depending on who I'm talking to. And it's like being bilingual, but it's totally useless.

So I was always sort of moving back and forth. And then I got sent to boarding school when I was really young, 10 years old, which was really tough, but you kind of learn to like, A, tough enough. B, you learn to be able to kind of just immerse yourself in whatever situation you're in and go with the flow and not have your personal sense of balance or stability or happiness be completely contingent on having like a lot of, you know, nice things going on around you basically, because I think boarding school for me in the beginning was pretty miserable, but then you have to just make a decision like, okay, I'm just going to make the best of it and I'm going to make it work. And I'm going to learn how to fit in with these kids, even though I'm, I'm really different. I come from the U S and I

want to get my ears pierced and they just want to like ride horses all day. Um, so as ridiculous as that sounds, uh, and I know it does it in some way prepares you for the life of being a journalist on the road a lot where you also have to be kind of a chameleon. You also have to be able to like immerse yourself in whatever culture or place that you are in. And there's not a lot of time really for complaining. And I had a very privileged upbringing and a very unconventional one. But one thing that was not tolerated in my house was whining. You know, you were not allowed to whine about like, I don't like it. You're, I don't want to do this or I don't want to go there. I don't, you know, that just wasn't. And in general, I do think that like

you should not be a war correspondent if you're a bit of a whiner, because you will, I also tell people if you're a picky eater, forget it find another path um so yeah in this weird way i think my my slightly unusual childhood did actually kind of pave the way and that it made me adaptable and i love the i love the input of your mom from time to time oh yeah like when she jumps in and she's got her mom isms i guess you would call them yeah yeah she is a real character my mother i mean she has no filter she should have her own reality show except it would be too dangerous because if you really if you really gave her a mouthpiece and a bullhorn i mean lord help us yeah on twitter it seems to work for some people yeah well exactly exactly. Exactly. I wanted to be an actress. I was like very into Russian literature and French new wave cinema and the

arts. And, um, you know, I think like so many Americans, I saw this happen with, I just had never experienced that level of shock and it was a profound epiphany and that I realized I was way too caught in my ivory bubble and not ivory tower even or my bubble and just completely oblivious or not actively enough engaged with some really complex and deeply disturbing dynamics that were going on in the world whereby I felt there was a profound miscommunication between cultures and people. And I felt that America was misunderstood by the world. I also felt that maybe the way we see ourselves as Americans was not the way we were being seen by the rest of the world. And so I sort of had this idea that maybe if I could go, because I loved languages and I loved love traveling, and I thought, maybe if I can go to these places and kind of go to the tip of the sphere, I can try to unpack some of this to help us understand why this happened and what's

going on. And maybe in the process, I also act as a sort of informal ambassador for America in that sense, in terms of explaining what we're about and, you know, that it's not all what it seems to be. And you get, go ahead. I was 21. I was just going to say, I was like really idealistic and full of hubris and thinking that I could change the world.

Ha ha ha ha ha. But yeah, that's what really started me on that journey. And I did too. When that happened, I was deeply Republican. I was deeply kind of in my own world. And everyone can make it and lift themselves up. That's what we're kind of working on. And then that just made me go, why is the world attacking us?

So what are the problems in the world? And then I flipped. And it was a similar moment for a lot of people. I never felt complete until they killed Osama, just knowing he was still out there doing his ill will. So you go right into journalism, and you go for it. You go hard. You start pursuing it.

You land at CNN in Russia, I believe. Yeah, as an intern. Well intern well actually my first stop which was a bizarre interlude was as uma thurman stand-in and kill bill um in beijing but that was like two months of just living in like wacky town and it was really fun but at the end of it they were like you want to come to la and finish the movie and i I was like, no, okay, I really need to start real life now. And so I went to CNN in Moscow as an intern for, I guess, three months. And then CNN didn't have any jobs in New York just yet. And I knew I wanted to work in a newsroom. And Fox News offered me a job like on the spot for $25,000 a year to work on the graveyard shift on the overnight assignment desk. And I was ambitious enough that I took it. And I, you know what, whenever people are like,

you know, did you pay your dues? I'm like, oh boy, did I pay my dues? I mean, I started like on the lowest of the lowest rungs of the totem pole. I mean, this was like subterranean and it was really depressing. Working overnights is incredibly challenging on your body, on your brain. I mean, it's just, it's not fun. And it was also a great education though. I mean, that's how I learned. You're basically, it's like me and one other 23 year old manning the desk. And what do you know? Like they find Saddam Hussein and it's like, how do you handle that situation when you're on it? That's where you learn about how the sort of, you know,

the assembly line of news really works from the moment you get the call. We're hearing Saddam Hussein has been found to the moment of putting someone on air with verified information and going with it. There's a lot of steps that happen in between that, even if it's just a 20-minute process. It's incredibly stressful, really high pressure, but it really gives you the best education you can have about how news services, whatever they may be, function and how they go about disseminating information. So it was miserable, but I don't regret it. That's awesome. I'm glad you're writing about Kill Bill. That's one of my favorite movies,

but you do have some good, you do have some good, interesting stories that I guess we'll just leave to in the book from about Quentin Tarantino and being on the set. It's quite fun, but you bug the crap out of your boss at Fox News to let you go to Iraq. You're 25 years old. I think when you finally hit the ground there, tell us about that. I mean, I think back on it now and I'm like, Chris, it was so wild. I was 25. I had no idea what I was doing. I had been sent on a hostile environments course for like two or three days and, you know, learned how to tie a tourniquet. And then there I was landing one, you know, baking hot June morning in Baghdad. And the first thing you notice that really is sort of scary is at that time, there was a raging insurgency in Iraq and they were

firing missiles at planes a lot. So what they did when the plane landed, the commercial airline, well, the only commercial airline, Royal Jordanian, which was manned by South African pilots, they would do this thing called the corkscrew as a landing to avoid being hit by missiles. And it's deeply unsettling when you're on a plane, you know, kind of going around in this corkscrew. And that's the moment where I think I realized, oh boy, like I'm really doing this. And is it too late to go home? The answer is yes. You are landing in Baghdad now. But it was also just thrilling. The feeling of the air and even, you know, I think you have a tendency when you start covering war and you've never experienced it before, it all seems really exciting and almost kind of glamorous because

it's like you've seen in the movies and there's people with huge guns and armored vehicles. And it's like, you've never seen that in real life. You've never experienced it. You've never smelled the air. And we had a barbecue at the hotel we're staying at and everyone's just like drinking beers and sitting by the pool. And you hear the call to prayer and a bomb in the distance. And it's very heady stuff when you're 25 years old. Then you get a bit more experienced. You have a few close calls and I think you become a lot more sober about the risks of the job, the responsibility of the job. And certainly that was the case for me in Iraq,

because it became clear to me that we were not, we were only telling half the story. We weren't really doing a good enough job of conveying to Americans, frankly, just how much of a disaster this was. Yeah, it really was. And that's what's interesting as you talk about your story through the book. You're also giving commentary on what your thoughts were, what your experience is. And, you know, I grew up watching Dan Rather, you know, foxholes and with his helmet. And, you know, there was a bit of romanticism to that because you look at him and you're like, hey, it's Dan Rather. And he's in like some bombed out whatever. But, you know, he's he's in like some bombed out whatever but you know he's so

brave yeah uh i think uh anderson cooper did some of the same thing early on yeah sometimes and uh so you see it and you're just like you're just like oh my gosh and but was the first like aha moment of like wow this stuff can get really deadly. Was the story you told in the book about the first time the hotel gets bombed in Baghdad? Yeah. Yeah. That was the first time. And it was only on my second trip.

And it was during Ramadan. And it was just before the fast breaks. And suddenly we heard this huge blast and we hear blasts all day, but this one was really close and everybody kind of went running to the other side of the newsroom to see, you know, what was going on. Then there was a second huge blast. And by now it was like, you know, windows were being blown in and there was just this like absolute, it's like chaotic, but you're also very, very still in that moment because, and you know,

I knew that we all had to get our run bags. We had to keep run bags by our bed, which had like passport money and, you know, just a few essential items basically and then we were supposed to go to the the panic room or uh which is like completely vaulted blocked locked and you're just in that moment you're just thinking like oh where's my rum bag like have to get my rum bag have to get my rum bag and then once i got my rum bag and understood that we're like under attack, like people are actively trying to kill us. Then there's this moment, honestly, that set in where it was like, what am I doing?

Why am I, I'm like, this is like crazy. I'm like, I could die, right? But I don't belong here. This isn't my place. Like what is, what, what i'm gonna die here what and and it sounds funny but at the time you're like wow i'm stupid is you know like what am i doing here the problem is what happens then there was the third blast and that was the biggest of all of them and like the doors blew off their hinges and people are cut and bleeding and we somehow make it into the panic room and general mazen the iraqi guy who sort of runs the office

is laughing and going welcome to baghdad and you know you're like whoa man this is a lot and then when you realize that you're not dead that the attack is over and you come out of the panic room and you start making phone calls and you start sweeping the glass up and you go down and have a look at the damage. And then there is this intense rush that comes with being like, we're alive. Everyone's okay. We got to get through another 12 hours of live shots. And then you're sitting around and you're drinking warm Jack Daniels and you're telling the story with each other kind of over and over again. And you realize that when you retell the story,

you're not in it anymore, that there's a barrier between the experience of it. And you don't any longer quite remember and feel that sickening fear. You just feel the excitement of surviving. And I think that's what some journalists get addicted to. Like the adrenaline, the juice sort of thing? Yeah. And that feeling of being like surviving death. I mean, it is pretty heady stuff. Now, for me, being a total scaredy cat, that's not the juice at all. And I hate being in situations where I'm really, even on very active front lines, I don't enjoy it at all.

I find it petrifying. For me, the juice is something else. It's about witnessing history. It's about connecting with people all over the world but it's still even if that's not your main source of addiction it is still a powerful jolt of adrenaline to the system to survive an ordeal like that i can imagine so and then in reading this story you you go out i think out back or you go outside and you can see parts of your assailants that have been blown up. And, and I think,

I think if I recall the story correctly if a fourth, if a fourth card come or if the one car had breached further, maybe 20 yards or something, you guys probably would have been told. And that's, that's extraordinary to me. When I was reading the book, I was just like, holy crap. Yeah, I mean, it's a really surreal thought. And the thing that was disturbing about going down and you see little bits of the bomber everywhere, and I describe in the book, not to make people feel uncomfortable, but his foot.

And it was like perfectly formed. I mean, obviously not attached to the rest of his body, but it's like a perfectly formed foot. And I just remember looking at it and I just like felt nothing, like zero. And I think that's what you also have to be careful. And like, look, that's for good reason. Basically your, your, your normal reactions shut down in those situations so that you can power through it and, and get out. But ultimately that's not a healthy way to be living your life. And that's why I think we see so many, I mean, forget journalists, look at all of these like soldiers and Marines and sailors who, who go to these places who are in the thick of some really hairy combat and then they come back to the u.s and you know their wife asked them to go buy toothpaste and they're like looking there's like 500 kinds of toothpaste and it's like what what i had friends that would go back to a fourth tour tour of duty in iraq and it was still hairy and i'd be like crazy. And they just felt so out of place being in America.

That's the problem. If there's a mentality as well, like you feel like you're with your band of brothers, you know, in the sense of like, you've all shared this thing, you've lived through it, you've, you've suffered through it. Right. Because there's a lot of like, oh, it's really hot and there's no AC. And sometimes the running water isn't working and you have to use bottled water to bathe and you missed your loved ones and da-da-da. And you feel like you really bond with the people that you're with. And then you go home to your real life and you're expected to be normal and go to a restaurant and sip wine from a glass and laugh. You're like, what? I can't do any of these things anymore

do you miss the adrenaline though uh yeah i think you just miss you feel when you come home i mean at least speaking for me personally you just feel really detached and kind of out of place and like lethargic and it's hard to get used to like if you live in a city it's really hard to get used to again like the noises of being a city, it's really hard to get used to, again, like the noises of being in a normal city or like being in a restaurant. There's no bombs going off. How can you sleep? Making glasses and everyone's like, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

And you're like, ah, like, can everyone be quiet? Kind of, you know, or maybe I should just go home. So you talk about one of the things that motivates you is being able to bear witness complex human stories. When I was reading the book, you know, the one thing about you is you're a very tall woman. You're a woman. You're very white. You're blonde.

So, I mean, in Syria, Iraq, Baghdad, a lot of these places you stick out like a sore thumb. And I realize how important it is to have some of the effects of the culture that you can kind of hide yourself. Because you talk about, you know, escaping the police, secret police that might be, you know, just monitoring the press and stuff. Tell us about what that adventure is like. So, you know, people always ask me, like, is it a blessing or a curse to be a woman in some of these war zones? And I have always said it's a huge asset asset really for the reason that you just outlined. Well, for two reasons, number one, I have access to 50% of the population that my male colleagues do not because

in a lot of these conservative societies, the women really are in a different part of the house. And if you're not a woman, you're never going to see them or meet them. But secondly, from like a logistical security point of view, I can do my job so much better if I am not the focus of the attention. And whether it's in a really dangerous situation like Syria, where I'm not supposed to be there, I'm there illegally and by covering my hair at least, and maybe even my full face, if I'm in a very, very dangerous situation and wearing a long flowing black abaya, it's like a cloak

of invisibility almost. And suddenly no one really looks at you. And I can be in the backseat of a car and pretend to be asleep and drive through a checkpoint potentially. So it really frees you up to be able to do your job. In other cases, it might not be as crucial as like a security kind of question of, you know, real mortal danger, but it might just be like, if I go to a protest or it's like crowded, I don't want to be the blonde chick in skinny jeans, kind of with everybody staring at

her. And I would much rather be kind of invisible again, so that I can watch the protest play out as it would be playing out. Now, obviously we have a camera, right? I'm not saying this is like we're totally invisible. That's naive. And I'm speaking English and doing pieces to camera. Like, no, we're not. But whatever I can do to kind of lower my profile a bit and improve my ability to take a step back and listen and observe is a real bonus in terms of getting a deeper understanding of what it is that's playing out in front of me. Do you feel as a woman, sometimes you're in a little bit more danger than men? Like there's a, there's a story in the book you tell about, I think you're in Gaza or Israel. I think, believe you're in Gaza and you get out of the car to smoke well uh your patriots

in the hospital and and it gets really out of hand yeah it gets weird fast because and that wasn't stupid of me because i know look gaza is a very conservative culture women maybe they smoke at home they certainly don't smoke in public. And it's considered to be a kind of a, like a loose lady thing to smoke publicly. And I wasn't wearing a headscarf and I'm just standing there smoking. And I probably looked arrogant and kind of stupid. I'm not proud of it. And I'm not proud of smoking full stop, by the way. I have subsequently stopped doing that, but this was a long time ago. So, you know, very quickly, yeah, I was getting all sorts of unwanted attention, let's say,

and it could have got out of hand. And it has for some of my female colleagues. I mean, look what happened to Laura Logan in Cairo. And, you know, she wasn't even smoking a cigarette. So there are situations where it can be, of course, very dangerous to be a woman because sexual assault is always a big fear. And to be honest, I haven't felt the threat of sexual assault often in the Middle East, but I have felt it. I was kidnapped by pro-Russian separatists. This didn't even make it into the book, by the way. It was only for one day,

but they were sort of taking all my jewelry off and kind of touching me while they were doing it. And that was the first time I had in my mind, oh man, like, okay, they're not probably going to cut my head off, which is what I was used to worrying about with going to Syria. But, you know, they could assault me potentially.

Yeah. So, yes, as a woman, like that's a reality and you have to be aware of it and you have to be mindful of it. But also I would say women are generally seen as being a little bit less threatening than men. And so whereas every single one of my Western male colleagues is viewed as a spy. Sometimes there's a little bit more like, well, maybe she's not a spy. She's just a crazy lady with a very, very patient husband. Whatever gets the story. What was interesting too in you telling your story was, you know, you really get into these people's lives.

Like I said, you just don't show up, shove a thing in the face. One thing, we'll talk about this in a bit here about journalism and some of the more important aspects of the book that talk towards that and the value of it. But there are times where you would stay with a family. And many times you're drinking with them, you're living at their home, they're helping you get the story, they're an integral part in some of the facets of the jobs that you need to build a story and and then you you eventually know what happens to them uh they they disappear or or you know that they get uh blown up or something uh talk a little bit about that if you would in that experience so that was really unique to syria and was the reason that syria i think is

like the first conflict that really ripped my heart out and um and wouldn't let go because normally in a situation whether it was baghdad whether it was beirut whether it was you know afghanistan countless other wars i've covered um you would go to the front lines for the day and work really hard and do your work. And then you go back at night to your hotel and there's other journalists there. And maybe you even get a beer, maybe not, but maybe. And you have that emotional space to decompress a little bit, to focus on your work and to not be immersed in that moment in the suffering that you have been witnessing all day. With Syria, because we were all there technically illegally, we had to stay in people's homes. They were risking their lives to host us in those homes. And so

I was in the room with this group of women when they found out that one of their husbands had died, who was also the brother of the man who was hosting us. And there's nowhere to go. You're there in this deeply personal moment, and they're sort of weeping and writhing on the floor and pulling out chunks of their hair. And it's a lot. And you think to yourself, first of all, wow, I'm in this moment that is so deeply personal. I don't really belong here. And then on the other hand, you're thinking, okay,

my real job right now is to bear witness and to not look away because it's painful. It's hard to be immersed in that intensity of grief with people that you're living with and who are feeding you. So I came to understand my role in Syria was like, don't look away, just sit with it, sit with the pain and take as much of it as you can and put it into your work. And then the next morning they bring you breakfast and you're like, how is this possible that these people have just, you know, had this profound loss? And by the way, the body is like in the workshop next to where we're sleeping. I mean, the whole thing is like so intense. And the next day they're bringing you breakfast and you're just like, wow, I haven't had that

level of intimacy with loss in a conflict situation before. And I do think it makes the work more powerful in a conflict situation before. And I do think it makes the work more powerful in a lot of ways. It also makes the job a lot tougher. Yeah, I can imagine. I would have a hard time. Like I would have a hard time. I remember reading the story of the, he was the photographer who took the picture, I think an Ethiopian picture where there's a bird, I forget the name of the bird,

that type of bird, but he ended up... The vulture. The vulture behind the baby, the bloated baby. And I remember that picture after 9-11. That was another thing that moved me. But he committed suicide. He just was so haunted by it. Yeah.

And so, you know, the think the great thing about your book is it's, it's a love letter journalism, as you say. And, but you really talk about the value of the work that goes into it. And I think this is so important for so many people in this world, especially the degradation of reporters, the degradation of journalism that some people have done in our government. You know, recently, Ali Velshi of MSNBC, there was some discussion by a certain person about how he was shot. I believe a tear gas canister actually hit him in the kneecap. But, you know, this attack on journalists, this suggestion of violence towards journalism, even in America. And in other countries that I'm sure you traveled in, there's been dictators that are like

journalists. Yeah, we can dig them out. This is like the real problem that I think maybe some people don't think about because in the U.S. it's like, oh, this is a political issue, right? But the sort of consistent undermining of journalism and undermining of Western journalists is actually, it actually puts us in danger in a sense. And I don't mean that to sound, you know, sort of overly dramatic, but it really does. Because if you're spending time in countries under authoritarian rule, where it used to be that Western journalists were held in very high esteem, and especially journalists doing sort of conflict reporting and going to dangerous places. And you felt that your government had your back, or you'd like to think that, you'd like to believe that.

And so if you're going to these places where you're kind of risking life and limb, and these other authoritarian leaders know that basically it's open season on journalists that basically, oh, you work for CNN and CNN's just being disparaged day in and day out. And it's hard to believe that people in the White House are going to get really mobilized to do something in that situation. I do think that emboldens people. And I think it emboldens them. Maybe it's not so much about us. And frankly, it isn't so much about us. Think of local journalists in these places, right? And it's like, well, if the president

of the United States says that journalists are enemy of the people, then why can't the president of Belarus say the same thing, right? And start beating up protesters in his country. So I do think it does have an insidious effect and one that is really, really disturbing. I wish there was some way to try to keep politics out of it. And I understand that there isn't in this day and age because of so many different facets. But fundamentally, I hope that people reading the book realize that most of us as journalists, I mean, the vast majority of us are really just working very hard to tell other people's stories. Like that is fundamentally our job. And yeah, that's the beauty of, uh, that's the beauty of journalism. You're there

to tell their stories. It's not really about you. And, uh, I just pulled up here. 95 journalists were killed last year during the course of their work. And, uh, I think I remember that there was a steady increase, uh, since about 2015, um, of journalists being killed. So it's hard work. One of the things that was fun, uh uh to read about the book was uh you working as a uh freelancer and how you build like all the different aspects of the stuff that you have to manage like i said it's not just showing up with a microphone and i think you'll read about like tell us about all the different people that have to be in your team if you will yeah so i mean this is the reason i wanted to work in tv because it's a team sport. And I think print is like,

I don't know. I was always worried to be really lonely. Um, and TV, I mean, at the minimum you've got, well, actually I've gone into Syria alone once because no one else got a visa.

And I shot the whole thing on like a little tourism camera and it didn't look pretty, but it did the job and it got, it got the picture out. Um, but generally speaking, you are at a minimum with a cameraman and a reporter, probably a producer as well. Then you will also have what we call a fixer, who is like your local producer. They're the person who has the Rolodex of who all the major players are on the ground. They're the person who knows

how to get from A to B, how to book an interview with X or Y. Then you also have your local drivers and your drivers are key because frankly, when it comes to working in these places, it's very humbling. You have to accept that you don't really know anything. Okay. And no matter how much, you know, you are still a tourist or you are a foreigner, you are visiting someone else's place of, uh, the place where they live and they know the dynamics better than you do. And they know the dangers better than you do. And I've been in situations where a driver will say like, no, no, no, we're not going any further down that road. And I'm looking at my map or my Google map and be like, no, no, no, I'm pretty sure the frontline is right there, you know, and they're like, no. And when you get more experience,

you learn to listen to them because they know better than you do. And if you have a great fixer, it's really, that is worth its weight in gold. I mean, there is nothing more valuable than having someone who really, really understands the lay of the land and is willing to give you all of their time. Because, you know, when you're covering war, I don't need to tell you the days are like 7am to 2am every day, maybe you get three or four hours of sleep. So the fixer is kind of the unsung hero of the television team and, frankly, of any print team as well. Yeah, it's quite extraordinary to read how you put it together

and you're getting people hotel rooms and you're moving about. Yeah, that's if you're a producer. I mean, the producers are, wow, they're the people who make the television happen. They're the people who get the satellites going, who organize to have drivers, who book people in hotel rooms, who book people flights, who keep track of who's doing what. I mean, it's a whole, you know, at CNN, we call it circus mastering. And the person on the ground,

there's always a circus master. And that is the person who is in charge of knowing where every single team is, who's doing what, what shift, what story they're going after, what editorial line they're pursuing. And it's a huge responsibility. Yeah. One of the other things that I was, there's a story in your book, and I believe you're in the college district, and this mother comes out, this lady comes out of her house, and she starts ripping a roadside bomb out of the, yeah, out of the ground. And you're, you're watching in horror. Cause I mean, there's a lot of things that can go wrong with this situation. And one of the things you have to realize is you're in this war state with these people and they're just trying to have what, you know, you or I have in a normal situation in normal city,. We're just trying to, you know, I don't know, do our lives.

And she comes out and gets an argument with the guys who are trying to blow stuff up. Tell us about that. No, I mean, this was so wild. So we're in Gaza, and Gilad Shalit has been taken by Hamas. And so the Israelis have launched an incursion to try to get him back. And there's, like, shelling and, you know, gunfights going on. And basically this woman had seen some Hamas militants lay a roadside bomb for one can assume an Israeli tank or patrol. And so the woman comes down and just starts yanking it out of the ground.

And someone like goes up ground and and someone like goes up to her and is like oh my gosh like what are you doing lady like and she's like i we don't want this we don't want this i don't want this trouble i don't want this drama i don't want this death i don't want any of this in my home and then a hamas guy comes up to her and is like listen it's not for you it's for the it's for the you. It's for the Zionist occupiers or whatever. And she's like, I don't really care who it's for. I don't want it anywhere near my children. And we were all like, oh, my gosh, this woman is like, first of all, so brave.

Second of all, going to get killed either by the roadside bomb that she is kind of like holding as she gesticulates or by the Hamas guy who was like, you need to put that bomb back in the room right now. And then it was like one of these situations where the situation became kinetic again, and we all had to like run and take cover. And so I don't know whatever happened to her. But those are the moments. And those are the people that I am fundamentally drawn towards telling their stories. And okay. We know what like Hamas says and what the Israeli army says,

but we don't hear enough. What this woman says, right. Which is that like, I hate all y'all. Yeah. That was the great part of the book. And there's a wonderful story. You all suck and you're all making the situation unbearable

for us. And we are the ones suffering and we're the ones getting blown up. And I think it's too easy to sort of, to lose sight of that sometimes. Yeah. And the stories you tell in the book that are on those lines you really get the human moments of it because you know i as i was reading i was imagining you going through it and being in people's homes and you're eating with them and and then there are times where you know that's the last time i saw that person they disappeared in the secret place or whatever. And you read these stories and it's so amazing. And I think it's so important for people to read because of journalism.

I'm sure there's a lot of young girls or young women or people that maybe want to grow up to be like you or aspire to be like you. Maybe even young men who want to be journalists, et cetera, et cetera. What advice would you give to them? So, I mean, to anyone who wants to be a journalist, I'm like, yes, okay, do it. We perform an essential function, and it's a great job. You get a front row on history. You're engaged. You're telling stories. It's a huge privilege, and we need the next generation of great journalists

to be, you know, to be following hotly on our footsteps, so to speak. So I am very excited whenever, and that's one of the things I really make an effort to do because I get journalists contacting me pretty much like every week, sometimes every day. And I always take the time to talk to them, Every single one of them. I mean, don't like maybe broadcast that too much because that'll be like inundated. Her email is. Yeah, exactly.

It's really important to me that we do, like we have a duty of responsibility to educate the next generation and to support them and to help them learn from our mistakes. So the advice I give them is, first of all, you got to have passion and you got to have commitment because it's a really hard job. And there's a lot of sacrifice entailed with it in terms of like your personal life is going to take a big hit, right? You're going to miss all sorts of Christmases, Hanukkahs, whatever your

celebration is, weddings, best friends, birthdays, you're going to miss them. You're going to be on the road a lot. You are going to be exhausted a lot. And you have to want this so much in order to be able to put up with that. Otherwise you'd be like, you know what, forget it. I'm going to work in a bank or whatever else you might want to do. I don't know. So if you have that fire in your belly and you have the passion, then you got to stick with it. And you also have to be prepared to eat crow for a couple of years in the beginning, because everybody thinks, and I know I thought this, you graduate from college and everyone's like, the world's your oyster. And it's like, it's the old dog.

You know, it's like, actually, I need you to make some photocopies. And then like, you know, I guess people don't make photocopies anymore. I don't know. But my point being that like, you need to be humble. And your first few years, it is going to be frustrating. And you're not going to be probably doing the exact job that you want to be doing. But keep your eyes open and your ears open. Find yourself a mentor. That is also hugely, hugely important. And just listen and learn. Yeah. How do you know when you have a good story?

Like when you know you really have a good story? Such a good question. It's really hard to put your finger on, honestly, but when you know, you just know, you know, I mean, I think, you know, if you have something that, if you've discovered something that has previously been hidden, or if you have a really poignant emotional moment, or if you have some incredible footage of something that, you know, there's many different factors that can make a great piece. But when you know, you know. One of the things you talk about your book too,

that I really love the insight on is the balance that you have with knowing, like, for example, what our government is telling us during the Iraq war was one of them, you know, Dick Cheney's doing his little backdoor thing and with Halliburton and stuff. And, but you don't really mention that in the book. That's me. But you're, but you're, you're kind of alluding to in the book, some of the different political things and what you're seeing the narrative being told back home to what you're really seeing on the ground. And you're having to balance that. And I can imagine that's maddening sometimes or challenging sometimes because you're like, Hey, somebody really needs it. It's really maddening because so often it's just, you know, it's a lie.

And it's one of the hardest parts of your job as a journalist. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a politician, but a big part of what you're often doing in interviews is sort of graciously informing the subject that you know they're lying. And if you grew up like I did with manners and stuff, like you never call someone out on being a liar. You know, you'd sit there and be like, oh, of course you were best friends with Elvis Presley. That's wonderful. Yeah. But in this job that doesn't fly, you have to hold people

accountable. You have to hold their feet to the fire. You have to press and probe and challenge them. And it doesn't matter if it's a politician or a jihadi leader, you have to do it or else you're going to get steamrolled. And honestly, it's one of the hardest parts. And yeah, you're right. It's one of the most frustrating parts when you're sort of watching a press conference and you're like, how on earth is anyone trying to pretend on any planet that this is anything other than an abject failure?

But obviously I can't phrase it like that on the news. And you find ways to rhetorically pose questions and point to examples whereby viewers can hopefully reach the same conclusion themselves are you really frustrated with the syrian conflict still going on i mean it's gone on forever in fact it's had a really huge impact on the world with the migrants being forced into the country forcing the rise of populism and racism and and i remember watching the drone footage of going over what used to be beautiful cities in syria and they're just bombed out construction sites i don't know if you want to speak to that at all i think that for me i hit rock bottom with Syria around 2015 in terms of I was so destroyed by what was happening.

I was so angry. I was so disappointed. I was so ashamed. I was so saddened. And I realized that I had to take a little bit of a step back. It really culminated in, I sent Ben Rhodes, who was President Obama's foreign policy advisor, an email late at night saying, I hope you're sleeping soundly as Aleppo burns, which, you know, I crossed the line. Okay, that's crossing the line. I'm not going to try to pretend it's not. But I think it speaks to where I was at in terms of how passionately I felt about that

conflict and how frustrated I felt by the lack of a clear U.S. policy and how I felt that that was sort of contributing to the chaos on the ground. Because basically, if you say Assad has to go, the president of Syria, who is brutalizing his own people, but then you don't do anything to make him go, it gets confusing. If you say chemical weapons are a red line, but then you don't do anything about it when chemical weapons are used, it gets confusing. And a lot of people get killed as a result. So I was exceptionally frustrated. And at that moment, I was like, okay, I have to take a little bit of a step back. I can't be so personally involved. And I talk about this as well in the book, because it's still taboo, as I mentioned,

to talk about things like stress and post-traumatic stress disorder and all the things that frankly are completely natural and are going to happen to anyone who does this job for a long time. And so I made a real decision to decision to not stop telling the Syrian story, but to take a little bit of a step back and find other stories I could tell as well and really try to concentrate on my family life and on trying to have a healthy and joyful normal life. It's kind of probably quite the changeover for you to settle into that, isn't it? We've all been kind of stuck in the home with the coronavirus.

Well, I mean, this is the first war I've ever had to cover from my living room. And people are like, oh, but it's not a war. And I'm like, I get it. It's not a violent conflict. There aren't bombs dropping from the sky. But this is on the level, I think, of 9-11 in terms of like monumentally huge events that will shape the way we see and understand and participate in the world for potentially years to come. And it is fine, it's an invisible enemy, but hundreds of thousands of people are dead and it's changed the way we

live. So I don't think it's inappropriate to call it a war in a sense. The difficult thing as a journalist is how do you convey the humanity and the heartbreak of this war? Okay, we're clear on like holding governments around the world responsible and accountable for the, you know, the lack of action or inaction, whatever it may be. And we're clear as well that we need to inform people in terms of the medical side of it and updating them. But what we haven't, I don't think, adequately conveyed is the heartbreak of all these people who've been killed, who've died, lives are lost. And you try to tell the story of the wars going on in care homes and hospitals. But when you're telling it with everybody has their face covered like this, it's really hard to convey the humanity over Zoom.

We could probably talk forever about your wonderful book. One of the last questions I have for you, how important is journalism these days? What do people really need to get? I think that people need to get that we're in a really dangerous moment where we're sort of slipping, I believe, potentially into a dystopian post-truth world. The goal of misinformation is not to persuade someone that, you know, climate change isn't real even. It's to bombard people with so much different false information that any normal person sort of puts their hands up and says, you know what, I can't make head or tails of any of this. It's all nonsense, right? It's to get you not to believe

the lie, but to reject the idea of truth. And that's what's so dangerous. That's why it's so important to have journalists who, whatever shortcomings they may have, whatever biases they may come to the table with, as long as they're relying on facts and working hard to tell people's stories, this is a vital service. This is the way people in power are held accountable. This is the way, you know, God willing, one day war criminals will be sent away because there are records of what they have done. And so I recognize that journalists might not be flavor of the month at the moment with a lot of people, but I hope that, you know, regardless of where anyone stands on the political spectrum,

that we can all get on board with the idea that this is important work and an important service. And, and we all need to support it. And I believe you have me on all fronts there, to plug the book. No pun intended. No pun intended. You know, I mean, when the fascists rise, that's the first people they take out, the journalists, the intellectuals, the scholars, the teachers, the people of science.

They get rid of these people for a reason, and this is so important that we don't rise to authoritarian or fascism. Uh, and I, you know, I had somebody, I've had a couple of people say this to me where they're like, you know,

it just kind of seems like all the major news things are kind of against Trump. And I'm like, they're not really against Trump, but he's doing so much stuff that like they have to cover. It's not like, it's not like they probably want to talk about it as much, but they kind of have to, and there's so much stuff going on.

There's a lot of news, exactly. Yeah, and it's sad that people perceive that that's some kind of prejudice when it's not. It's just there's a lot of bad stuff going on. No, and for those of us who are covering international as well, I mean, you you know it's like again we're not even covering politics it doesn't matter i do a report on tv and i get some psycho on twitter saying i'm you know fake news or this and that i mean whatever the person has

an egg for a profile picture and 13 followers i'm not losing sleep over it but still I'm like, what is this about? Yeah. We'll probably have to rush an IP address. So as we go out, anything more you'd like to plug on your book or anything more we should know? No, I just would love for people to take a little bit of time to read it because you don't have to be a news junkie to realize that it's a big and beautiful world out there and to find some of these exciting and fascinating people in places I've been to really compelling. There you go. Well, thank you for being on the show, Clarissa.

Thank you for having me, Chris. It was so much fun. Thank you to my audience. Be sure to check out the book. It's Clarissa Ward on all fronts, the education of a journalist. You're going to love this. You go through all of her life experience, the different adventures she goes through. They're scary, they're thrilling, they're heartbreaking. It's a movie, really, when it comes down to it. Maybe they'll make a movie of it.

How about that? Who knows? There you go. And I think it's inspiring, and as she says, it's a love letter to journalism, which I think is more important now than ever. It's one of the logs I'm holding on to journalism, which I think is more important now than ever. It's one of the logs I'm holding on to.

Every time I log into the Washington Post, I see that democracy dies in darkness, and I go, okay, we're good for one more day. So that's all important. Be sure to check it out, guys. You can order it on Amazon or other different booksellers around the world. Support your independent booksellers. Also, you can see the video version of this on youtube.com. For just Chris Foss, hit that bell notification button. Follow me on goodreads.com and our new book club there.

Also, you can go to, you can see all the wonderful authors we have on the show, amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash Chris Foss. You can peruse all the different authors that have been on the show. Hit the buy button and everything else. You're the number one bestseller, actually, right now on Amazon. So congratulations for that. That's my victory dance. There you go. There you go.

I don't know if that's new. It's probably been there for a while. Your book just came out. I think it's in Syrian history, which is, you know. Oh, in Syrian history. Well, don't tell them that. It's a little more niche, but I'll take it. I'll take it.

There you go. Thank you, to my honest, for tuning in. Thanks, Clarissa, for Syrian history. Well, don't tell them that. It's a little more niche, but I'll take it. I'll take it. There you go. Thank you, to my honest, for tuning in. Thanks, Clarissa, for being here. Be well, stay safe, wear your masks, and we'll see you guys next time.