By Marissa Nelson
Seasoned global correspondent talks about her responsibilities as a journalist
The famine in Ethiopiafrom 1983 until 1985 was the first traumatic story Martha Raddatz covered as a young reporter.
“It was stunning,” Raddatz said over the phone. “I mean people were dying right next to us. Mothers were running after our truck trying to give us their children so they wouldn’t starve.”
One night, as Ethiopians and volunteers washed and dressed the dead in white shrouds before burial, Raddatz remembers walking up a hill toward a large tent to distance herself from the “intimate scene.”
“I was crying and then I remember just thinking, ‘I had no right to do that, I was not the one suffering,’” Raddatz said. “I have a job bigger than myself where I can tell people about that and hope that people would care or could help, or just in anyway inform the world what is going on in certain countries.”
For Raddatz, journalism isn’t just something she wants to do (which she does). However, it is also a job that she feels she has a responsibility to do, particularly when it comes to reporting on U.S. forces and global affairs. And she does so with respect, dignity and intentional decisions based on journalism ethics and objectivity. For instance, she wears bright colored scarves in war zones and finds unique locations to report from, like an ice fishing festivalin South Korea, near the North Korean border.
“They’re important stories for Americans to see and important stories for Americans to learn about the world, what our place is in the world, what our responsibilities are in the world and how that affects people,” Raddatz said.
Raddatz is the Chief Global Affairs Correspondent at ABC News and co-anchor of “This Week with George Stephanoupolis.” She has had a versatile career covering everything from presidential campaigns and the Pentagon to reporting from conflict zones around the world including Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bosnia.
Though Raddatz appreciates being able to use her skill set in many different ways, she doesn’t hesitate to name her favorite. “Oh, definitely international reporting,” Raddatz said. “I would probably rather be covering conflict in Iraq than doing a presidential debate, but they’re both very challenging in very different ways.”
Raddatz’s journalism career began the day she dropped out of college during her junior year at the University of Utah to work at KTVX, a local TV station in Utah. Since then, Raddatz has developed a remarkable resume. She has been the chief correspondent at the ABC affiliate in Boston, the Pentagon correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) and the White House correspondent for ABC. She co-moderated the town hall presidential debatein October 2016 between now President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And she’s the only television reporter who has flown in an F-15 fighter jetto cover a combat mission over Afghanistan.
Raddatz flying in an F-15 Fighter Jet in 2010. (Image courtesy of ABC News)
Raddatz has been recognized many times for her reporting, both domestic and international. She has earned four Emmy awards, the Walter Cronkite award for excellence in political journalism and the Daniel Pearl Award from the Chicago Journalists Association. Most recently, Raddatz received the George Catlett Marshall Medalfrom the Association of the U.S. Army, which she is “really, really, really” proud of.
“Fewer than one percent of our country is serving and it’s a voice that has to be heard,” Raddatz said. “These people are volunteering for all of us. I couldn’t not do it. It was, it is too important not to do.”
Having spent 25 years reporting on the U.S. military, Raddatz has built relationships with those in the armed forces, including soldiers and their families. However, Raddatz said that these relationships do not inhibit her reporting.
“The people I respect the most in the military understand that part of my job is if something goes wrong I need to report that,” Raddatz said. She mentioned a book she wrote in 2011, “The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family,” about a 2004 battle in Sadr City, Iraq that killed eight American soldiers. Last year, National Geographic turned it into a seven part documentary series. Raddatz said she knows the soldiers in the battle like she knows her family, and she knows their families too.
“I really would givehuge props to the army for cooperating with that because it was a story about things gone wrong,” Raddatz said. “It was a story of heroism, but it was also a story of one of those who was injured badly became an anti-war protester and the army said, ‘Tell the whole story, just tell the truth.’”
No matter the relationships she’s cultivated with her sources, when reporting on U.S. policies and what they do, Raddatz said that she does so objectively. She said that it’s important for a journalist to monitor and question their work, asking, “Am I doing this right? Am I staying objective?”
Though objectivity, for Raddatz, isn’t simple. It’s not black and white and there’s no clear rule to follow. It takes judgement, introspection and continuous personal evaluation. For instance, Raddatz said that she is not objective about service and sacrifice.
“I’m an American, too,” Raddatz said. She mentioned a time when she reported in Africa and another reporter, who was moved by the poverty and starvation, wanted to help the community they were in on his day off. His editor said he couldn’t because he was becoming too involved in the story.
“My reaction to that is, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Raddatz said. “That reporter wanted to help people. Helping people and, as I said, service and sacrifice, I think cross no ethical lines. We are human beings and I think better reporters have a soul. They understand the complexities of the world and want to make it a better place. ”
Header image courtesy of Politico
-30-