what we had been through that day. But humans, and especially journalists, often have a hard time keeping a secret. Sitting around the restaurant that night, the all-male NBC and CBS teams were discussing a possible plan to get inside the Parliament by stowing away in an ambulance the next day. They were desperate to get inside but were afraid, and probably rightly so, just to bolt across the square as we had. Jane, Christiane, and I sat in silence, dying to boast that the girls had already done that while the boys were sitting around debating the risks. Women covering war often feel they have to be braver and tougher than their male competitors, just to prove themselves. If we could wait a few hours, we could gloat to our hearts’ content. But it was just too tempting to burst the balloon of macho bravado, and it slipped out of Jane’s mouth. Jane was a female pioneer in the male-dominated world of cameramen and had taken endless amounts of grief over the years, so maybe she deserved her moment. The boys were shocked and hurried to match our story. That day other networks got to President Gamsakhurdia, but we still beat everyone else, getting the story on the air several hours before them, the kind of thing that reporters pride themselves on.
Many war zones later, I found out that covering a war is often all about that kind of bravado and, in some cases, an addiction to danger. Some correspondents give up their families and stable lives to push themselves to the limits of risk and endurance. Although CNN took care to provide flak jackets, lots of hardened journalists would never be caught dead in one, the wartime equivalent of seat belts. Staring death in the face and surviving can be empowering, and some people feel more alive by coming close to death. During that first trip to Georgia, I was such a novice I didn’t even know that flak jackets were an option. I saw the soldiers in them, but didn’tknow we could have them too. Later, I was often embarrassed to bring up the issue of wearing one, because I didn’t want to show how scared I was. We could always tell the new crew to the scene: they were the ones suited up in flak jackets and helmets. Camera-people often resisted wearing them because they said flak jackets impeded their flexibility. That often made the rest of us feel like wimps for wearing them. As a result, we were inconsistent. Half the time we put them on after we found ourselves in the middle of a gun battle, crawling back to the car on our bellies to fish them out of the trunk. I saw people sensibly tape their blood type to the front of their flak jackets, but I never did the same. It made the reality of why we wore them too visceral. I became nonchalant about basic safety precautions—playing Russian roulette with my life. Like many other correspondents, I was deluded, thinking that danger somehow diminished each day I was there covering a war.
After I got back to Moscow from a few weeks in Georgia, I started working in my free time on my voice and camera presence. When I was out with a camera crew shooting a story, I practiced speaking in front of the camera until I became comfortable. On days off I wrote my own stories. It had become frustrating to do interviews and be out discovering all the quirky aspects of a story firsthand and then turn all I had found over to a reporter to write. Often that reporter didn’t understand the language or hadn’t been filming with me, so some of the nuance would be lost. I wanted to tell the stories myself. In a matter of months I moved up from producer to correspondent. That was one of the great things about CNN in those early days: anyone with the desire to advance could do so with a bit of perseverance and hard work and willingness to work through weekends and holidays. My other lucky break was that Eason Jordan was in charge. Eason never discriminated on the basis of gender. If a story breaks, he wants someone in there coveringit, and never seems to care if
Many war zones later, I found out that covering a war is often all about that kind of bravado and, in some cases, an addiction to danger. Some correspondents give up their families and stable lives to push themselves to the limits of risk and endurance. Although CNN took care to provide flak jackets, lots of hardened journalists would never be caught dead in one, the wartime equivalent of seat belts. Staring death in the face and surviving can be empowering, and some people feel more alive by coming close to death. During that first trip to Georgia, I was such a novice I didn’t even know that flak jackets were an option. I saw the soldiers in them, but didn’tknow we could have them too. Later, I was often embarrassed to bring up the issue of wearing one, because I didn’t want to show how scared I was. We could always tell the new crew to the scene: they were the ones suited up in flak jackets and helmets. Camera-people often resisted wearing them because they said flak jackets impeded their flexibility. That often made the rest of us feel like wimps for wearing them. As a result, we were inconsistent. Half the time we put them on after we found ourselves in the middle of a gun battle, crawling back to the car on our bellies to fish them out of the trunk. I saw people sensibly tape their blood type to the front of their flak jackets, but I never did the same. It made the reality of why we wore them too visceral. I became nonchalant about basic safety precautions—playing Russian roulette with my life. Like many other correspondents, I was deluded, thinking that danger somehow diminished each day I was there covering a war.
After I got back to Moscow from a few weeks in Georgia, I started working in my free time on my voice and camera presence. When I was out with a camera crew shooting a story, I practiced speaking in front of the camera until I became comfortable. On days off I wrote my own stories. It had become frustrating to do interviews and be out discovering all the quirky aspects of a story firsthand and then turn all I had found over to a reporter to write. Often that reporter didn’t understand the language or hadn’t been filming with me, so some of the nuance would be lost. I wanted to tell the stories myself. In a matter of months I moved up from producer to correspondent. That was one of the great things about CNN in those early days: anyone with the desire to advance could do so with a bit of perseverance and hard work and willingness to work through weekends and holidays. My other lucky break was that Eason Jordan was in charge. Eason never discriminated on the basis of gender. If a story breaks, he wants someone in there coveringit, and never seems to care if
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