Day One, Panel Four: What Do I Do Now, Boss?

Moderator/Umpire:Eugene Roberts, University of Maryland School of Journalism

-Thom Shanker, Assistant Washington Editor, New York Times
-Tom Gjelten, Foreign Correspondent, National Public Radio

ROY GUTMAN: I'll turn this session on ethics in conflicts over now to Tom Gjelten, Thom Shanker and Gene Roberts to introduce. This is a session that we originally thought should be off the record, but our good friends from Freedom Forum have convinced us to think it through. So I guess we're going to be on the record. Let me turn it over now to Gene Roberts.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Okay. Let me repeat once again it is on the record. I will take us to each section of a hypothetical by reading it quickly so that we're all focused on the same points.

--Fierce ethnic fighting has broken out in a foreign country. There are unconfirmed reports of slaughter, forced deportations, and mass starvation. All roads leading in and out of the war zone are blocked. There is no news source from the affected area except for what is reported by the warring parties themselves. The commander of the aggressing party thinks for whatever reason that your correspondent might be sympathetic and invites him or her to accompany him on a helicopter tour of a war zone. Your correspondent will need to play along with the commander's expectation in order to take advantage of this opportunity. Thugs will be around at all times. It's a chance for exclusive coverage but under highly controlled conditions. What does the correspondent do?

THOM SHANKER: Let me just add a little footnote to this. Particularly in the panel with photojournalists, you've seen already from reporters and photographers in the field that we come up against ethical dilemmas all the time and generally handle them just as they come, sort of make instinctive, spontaneous judgments. And Ron mentioned going out with Arcan, traveling with Arcan and then having to confront the fact that he had come into that zone with that particular side.

I guess what we would like for you to speculate on moment by moment here- we just have a bunch of these scenarios- is whether it makes sense really to leave these situations up to the reporters and photographers themselves to make their own judgments in the moment, or whether it makes sense as part of some kind of broader training program for war reporting to think about these dilemmas ahead of time and even to prepare for them. And that's one of the reasons we wanted to lay out some of these scenarios today.

So this first question is if you have an opportunity to go in with one of the warring parties, what does that ethically or professionally constrain you or not constrain you from doing? Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

A PARTICIPANT: I would just say that it allows me to be an eyewitness. So that would be the pro side of it, that if I went into a war zone with them in a helicopter, that I could see what was happening for myself, which would help me know if some of the rumors were true or not true. And then I might come up with other sources that I could use after I get out of that helicopter and do my own reporting away from that General. So I don't think it would be a bad idea as long as you weren't compromising principles about the final reporting that you would do.

A PARTICIPANT: With respect to the scenario, I don't see there's an issue here at all. If you're covering a conflict, you're invariably on one side or the other. If you're in the middle, you're foolish. So you're only going to be getting one perspective at any given time. And quite often, for example in the Croatian War and also in the Bosnian War and in many other wars, you can't get to the other side. You might be able to if you're looking at it in a time span of months. But for the same story, you're not going to be able to cross the line. So if you want to cover conflict, you have to take advantage where you can, going in on one side or the other. So I don't see this in a conflict environment as a particular ethical dilemma.

THOM SHANKER: Would it make a difference if the commander who was escorting you had been indicted by a war crimes tribunal and, in fact, was the subject of a manhunt?

A PARTICIPANT: I mean I think I'm with Ron. I think you've got to go. What I think you must do is reflect that in your photojournalism or in your reportage.

EUGENE ROBERTS: But Thom, don't you know of an instance in which a reporter did this and was under heavy criticism from his colleagues?

THOM SHANKER: I think early on a lot of people here who covered the early months of the Bosnian War remember a couple of correspondents who, right after Sarajevo was evacuated and there were absolutely no Western correspondents in the region, went into the zone at least under the escort of Radovan Karadzic. They then of course crossed into Sarajevo on their own, but they were very criticized by their colleagues at the time. Perhaps it was competitive, perhaps it was ethical.

A PARTICIPANT: What was the criticism?

THOM SHANKER: That they were taking too much support from the aggressor's army.

A PARTICIPANT: I can't see an issue here, really, in that you're obligated to take advantage of these situations to go and discover what's going on. And as long as you don't become a participant in what Karadzic is doing I can't really see a problem. I really feel it's our obligation to go and see.

EUGENE ROBERTS: And I think Ron pointed out that even though you went in under escort that you were able to get the photograph you wanted and get them out.

RON HAVIV: That's a perfect example. In a positive light, I was able to utilize the situation to photograph what was happening and do my best. And I think like Gary said, you need to take advantage of any situation possible to move into a region. And I think in the situation where the reporter's working with Karadzic, aside from being an interesting angle to go with Karadzic into the outskirts of Sarajevo, why would they be criticized for that? I don't really see the reason for it.

A PARTICIPANT: I don't think that it's a rhetorical question because we just had this situation with Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty in Moscow. Our correspondent was detained by the Russian forces, and they found this film that he carried with him. And then they accused him of being not a witness but a participant of the execution of the Russian prisoners of war. So we had this legal procedure, and we still have it over there, but we kind of found the answer for ourselves. And when I say we, I mean Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty defending our correspondents. So our answer was that's what he was supposed to do. And it is quite ethical that he was a witness. The other problem is that he never touched the weapons, he never took any arms in his arm. So that's it.

A PARTICIPANT: Regarding Thom's additional question about whether you should be with this person if he's an indicted war criminal. It seems to me one of the real stories you can tell in a conflict that might get the interest of the public, because I'm not sure how much interest there is generally, is the story of the crimes of the criminal. And therefore, you've really got to be around him as much as possible and get inside his mind, whether he's indicted or not indicted. And you’ve got to and pick up all the verbal cues and all the other cues of what they're doing and get ideas for stories out of it, and check out things that you've heard from the other side or that you've come in with. And if it's that you file to often, if you're there and you're trying to file from within that camp, you're very limited. You cannot really tell anything truthful, and that would worry me if reporters are staying there and filing while being watched at every moment. Then it seems to me that you may be compromising your effort to do an objective report. But otherwise, it seems to me you should be there as much as you can.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Right. And as you pointed out, in many situations if you aren't on one side or the other operating, then you're in no man's land, which is the worst possible place to be.

Let me complicate the hypothetical. For the purpose of this, instead of the helicopter ride he tries on his own to cross over land to reach the besieged area. At a checkpoint your correspondent is told that he cannot proceed because transit papers are not in order. Clearly a meaningless statement in a lawless land, but one meant to corral western correspondents away from the war zone. But your correspondents translate, he used to work for the pro regime media, reveals that he has stolen the official media transit stamp from media headquarters and can forge travel documents into the war zone. Every other correspondent is stuck at the edge of a war zone unable to cross. Should your correspondent use the forged document?

A PARTICIPANT: Yes.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Tell us why.

PARTICIPANT: Absolutely. You have to figure out yourself what the risks are on the ground, the risks of getting caught, and the risks of being detected. But you have to go with it for me. I mean that's personally what I would do.

EUGENE ROBERTS: And would that be a decision you would be likely to make with a long distance phone call to some editor someplace?

A PARTICIPANT: No. I think the only consideration I have at that point is the translator. That might be the point where you let the translator go because it's the translator that's carrying the stamp. And so I wouldn't feel comfortable necessarily taking the translator with me. But that really would be the only issue I would have. The only reason to call back home would be to let them know where you're going.

EUGENE ROBERTS: There must be some law abiding journalists out here. Tell me what you think.

A PARTICIPANT: I have a problem on that one maybe because I'm a print journalist. I think of the David Rhode story. David basically got fake papers. And the problem is that you get found out. You will get found out. And then they really have a case against you. And if it wasn't for the Dayton Peace Accords going on at that very moment, he would have been there for a very long time. I just think what one should do in general is get every document you can, you collect every piece of paper, you try to put them in different shoes or different pockets and know when to bring them out. But I have a problem, at least as a print person, carrying fake papers.

THOM SHANKER: Is there an editor here who could respond particularly because when this happens, sometimes your newspaper or your radio station will be banned totally from covering the story from the official side. Is there an editor here who could possibly tell us what you would do if your correspondent called you on a sat phone and asked you for advice?

EUGENE ROBERTS: Is this a decision you'd be comfortable with a reporter making, or would you want to be consulted?

A PARTICIPANT: I am a strong believer that ultimately it's the reporter on the ground that has to make a lot of these decisions. You don't have the luxury of calling an editor. Too often you're libel to have an editor that doesn't understand, who hadn't gone through those situations before. I think there are a lot of foreign editors who haven't covered conflicts. Yeah, I would trust my reporter to do it, and I wouldn't have a problem. Being a good reporter means using ingenuity including when you're in a lawless land, there are no laws. It's getting the story and getting out. If there's a problem with being banned, that comes with the territory. You don't stop and say I'm not going to cover the story because I may not get allowed to cover it again. I think if a story is good enough then you take that risk.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Tom, would you do that?

TOM GJELTEN: I just can't say in the abstract if I would or not. I actually traveled on expired documents and played with the expiration date to make it look valid, which is actually similar to what David Rhode did. But there might be circumstances when I would consider it too risky and it wouldn't be worth it. To me it all comes down to what's the potential payoff and what's the potential risk. And you sort of make that assessment in the circumstance, and it's hard to make a general principal I'd say. I don't have an ethical problem with it.

EUGENE ROBERTS: One of the morals of this story to me is that if the editor or the newspaper wants to involve themselves in this kind of decision, if it's important to the newspaper that it not ever be involved in any illegal act, then the time to discuss this is in the process of assigning the reporter. Take the reporter to lunch or have a hypothetical kind of conversation like we're having today. Because when you get under the gun, communication problems enter into it, and the reporter literally may have to decide right on the moment whether he's going to take the trip or decline the trip or use a forged document or not use a forged document. So no matter how busy you are, if you care about this kind of issue, better to talk in advance.

THOM SHANKER: I was thinking, Tom and I had an experience in Eastern Bosnia, in the spring of '93, when we weren't using forged documents, but we were able to cross at Svornik when everybody else couldn’t because we had documents to Pale. We just took a very long and circuitous route that didn't end up in Pale. We did get stopped outside of Srebrenica. We were escorted across a bridge at the point of a tank. And my editors were very angry afterwards that I hadn't discussed that strategy with them. I think I'm a little concerned by editors who say only I want the correspondents in the field to make this decision. I trust them. Because the competitive demands of getting the story, unless you really know the maturity level, unless you really know the background of your corespondent, they will all too often feel the competitive pressure to push the envelope. And that's where we as editors have to step in because a life can be at stake. And dead hacks miss deadlines.

A PARTICIPANT: A little historical note. I think the danger of letting editors make decisions is a real danger than can harm coverage. And I'll use just the incident of the fall of Vietnam. The CIA and the government were conducting a major campaign to try and spook editors and publishers back home to pull out their correspondents. They were putting out all these stories, a mass bloodbath, you've got to get out. They started trying to get correspondents to leave two weeks before the fall of Saigon. Kay Grahams was called in, and I know there was a big discussion. I was working for Newsweek at the time in Saigon, and we and the Washington Post got orders that said get the hell out of there. And basically we rebelled. We said wait a minute, we've been covering this for 10 years. This is the biggest war in America of our era. We're going to leave when ambassador leaves. I mean everyone made their own decisions, but there was a real rebellion. A lot of journalists who were asked to leave said we can't leave. We would have been fools professionally to leave two weeks before and say, well, my editors ordered me out. So in the end, honest journalists have to make those decisions for themselves sometimes, because editors often will make the wrong decision for other reasons. They'll listen to the CIA in Washington. It's a real mistake.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Good point. Let's complicate the situation somewhat. Somehow the correspondent makes it to the war zone and discovers that the reports of atrocities committed by the aggressing party are, if anything, understated. But with all the hotels closed and very little electricity or food, the only available place for your correspondent is to stay in a building used as the wartime headquarters of the victimized side. Would you allow your correspondent to take up residence in the building to continue covering the conflict?

A PARTICIPANT: Are you saying he gets there on his own?

EUGENE ROBERTS: He gets there on his own or he finds himself on his own, but he finds all the hotels closed down, and the only place he knows of offhand to stay is the victimized party's headquarters. Does he stay there?

A PARTICIPANT: I can give you a real-time example. There's two of us here that went in with the Hague tribunalists to do investigations at the fall in Kluch. We were taken in with the UN, and from there we transferred over to the Bosnian Muslim military and we were looking for mass graves falling behind the front lines. And we got put up in a house that had been cleansed. It was a Serb house. And we stayed there and we had a lot of problems with what are we doing there. We were on an investigation, yet, these people have been cleared from the town. So I think in the end it was a question of we weren't going to stop and say I can't stay here to our host, we simply stayed. So I think again it comes back to it's your decision on the ground of what you're going to do.

A PARTICIPANT: I think you've raised an interesting issue. I think it's a matter very much of choice if it's the only place to stay. I remember when a few of us went in to Iraqi Kurdistan just before the Iraqis counter-attacked on the territory that the Kurds had taken, and the only place to stay was with the people who became the victims, the Mujaheddin. And one guy dropped a gun where I was sleeping and I woke up with the barrel that far from my head. So it wasn't a pleasant place to sleep, but it was the only place to sleep.

But right now there is someone who I will not mention, a very senior person with one of the international organizations with a lot of responsibility in Kosovo who has come in and rented, because it's an elegant place, the house of a very prominent Serb who was murdered just weeks before he arrived. I think on principle, because there are other places to rent, he should not be in that house. I think that should be a statement that they should make.

So I think it depends. Again, like so much that we've discussed, it's case by case.

EUGENE ROBERTS: But essentially we're saying what are the alternatives? We’re saying that this should be a question you should ask before you casually do what could be interpreted as choosing sides or becoming identified with a side.

TONY BORDEN: Many people didn't stay in a house, particularly freelancers made a lot of friends with Sarajevans and stayed there over time. It's the same question, isn't it really?

THOM SHANKER: No, I think more specifically it was in the early weeks of the conflict before any of the hotels opened, before there was running water, people were staying at the Bosnian presidency, and that was something that the Serbs pointed to in all the early dispatches out of Sarajevo.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Again, let us complicate it. While covering this conflict, your correspondent stumbles across the scene of a horrible massacre. Deadline is approaching and your correspondent is scrambling to find some way to file. Would you approve using the satellite telephone of the Red Cross or of the United Nations troop station nearby or possibly the phones of the aggressing side or the victimized side?

A PARTICIPANT: Get the story out any way you can.

A PARTICIPANT: I'll tell you another historical note. When Sabra & Shatila happened in Beirut in '82, those of us who stumbled upon this major massacre found that there was no way of communicating out of Beirut. All the lights were out and everything else. It was on a Saturday, and we were all trying to make Sunday papers. And the only way finally to get that story out- I by then had left Newsweek and was working for the Post- was to go across the green line to the Israeli army. The Israelis had set up in East Beirut their own communications system to Tel Aviv, and we filed the Sabra & Shatila story, which was a big embarrassment to the Israelis, down their military line to Tel Aviv and patched through to Washington.

So I think again it's resourcefulness. You're sitting on a major story, any way you can get it out I think you get it out as long as you're not compromising yourself or the story or journalism.

THOM SHANKER: But where do you begin compromising yourself? If the side that's been victimized clearly is interested in getting your story out for whatever reasons that doesn't degrade the quality of the scoop, is there some support aid if they drove you in an armored car to- is there any line you would draw that's too much assistance from one side in your effort to file.

A PARTICIPANT: Well, the side that had been victimized was dead, so that was not an issue in this story. But I think if all of a sudden they said listen, we can put you in a car and get you to Damascus, which was the other alternative we were talking about. Do we go to Damascus to get the story out? And if that had meant getting help from Syrians or Palestinians, I would have done it.

GARY KNIGHT: I think it comes down to if you're sure of what you've seen, then look at the big picture. Be aware of the details, but look at the big picture, get the story out. If you think that you've been lied to, you might have been taken to selective sites, then you don't file the story or you file the story with that caveat. But I think you really need to look at the big picture with these issues.

TOM GJELTEN: Gary, can you twist that around a little bit to come up with a scenario where you really need to be a lot more careful about filing a story in that situation.

GARY KNIGHT: For example, let's say the Serb army took us to a site and they showed us some dead bodies and said there's been a massacre here and you can file the pictures down our phone lines. I'd be deeply suspicious if they'd invited me and taken me to this site. I'd really need to know what had gone on, and that wouldn't be enough for me. But if I, through my own ingenuity and through my own resources, found something and refugees had told me a massacre had occurred, and I'd found this site in the place where they said it had occurred, and I could verify this with two or three different sources, and I was sure of what I was saying, then I'd have absolutely no problem hitchhiking a ride with the Serbs and using their sat phone, for example. Protagonists are irrelevant. But I think if you're on a dog and pony trip, you have to be really careful. But if you're really sure of what you're seeing, you file it with caveats. Obviously it's just good journalism.

TONY BORDEN: I live in London now, so maybe my experience with a lot of very talented but definitely British journalists with ingenuity means that I'm not quite so sensitive to the issue anymore. But isn't so much of journalism sponsored in one way or another, and isn’t it really up to you and your story and how you and your editors see it? Roy may travel with Madeleine, that's a sponsored trip in some way. I mean everything is sponsored and spin is all over the place, and these are hard, hard cases at the edge of it, but they only make it in a sense more justifiable, because you really have fewer options. The other thing I was thinking of is, and maybe here it wouldn't be done so much, but a lot of British freelance journalists will do sponsored aid stories. They can't get to that place unless the aid agency sponsors their flight. They're going because they care about the situation in Africa where they're not going to get to anyway. The aid agency knows that they're going to raise concern for the issue and perhaps highlight their own work. Probably it should say this trip has a sponsorship element to it and some caveat or some kind of banner. But there's so much sponsorship in almost everything that's done that I think it's all just layers and layers of it. I find it hard to see very sharp lines, although I think you're right to try to draw them.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Tom Gjelten is going to complicate the situation for us again by adding a couple of hypotheticals. I think every one that we've come across so far is one that's familiar to anyone that's been in a war reporting situation. And the next one involves under what conditions, if any, should you pay money to either of the sides in the story.

The scenario that we suggest here is that you're with somebody like Arcan after Bjljina (phonetic) or after one of his more colorful escapades, and he offers an exclusive interview to you but expects to be paid for it. Are there any circumstances under which your correspondent should pay a source for an interview if that interview is really key to reporting the story at that time?

RON HAVIV: When you talk about being paid, are you talking strictly by dollars or there are lots of ways people can be paid.

A PARTICIPANT: No, cash.

RON HAVIV: But somebody could also want to be paid with food. There's lots of different ways, just to complicate it I guess to another level also.

LOREN: Well, I would just say that they're going to be interviewing, you shouldn't get into a commercial interchange, and there are other ways of getting the story than buying it, and they're more reliable.

KEN BODE: Doesn't NPR have a policy about this? I know CNN has a policy about paying for interviews, that when a reporter's out there in the field, doesn't he have to violate a company policy to buy an interview?

A PARTICIPANT: We're not that structured yet. We make the policies as we go. As far as I know, there is no policy.

TOM GJELTEN: I was based for a short time in Britain, and I know that the BBC actually does pay for interviews, not in this kind of suspicious way but, for example experts. If you interview an expert it's expected that you will pay. If you interview an academic on a subject that he or she is a specialist on, you are expected to pay for the interview. So the question is if that's legitimate and this is a long established tradition at the BBC, why is it not legitimate to pay a source in the field?

EUGENE ROBERTS: Let me ask a question. Is there any news organization represented here who has a written policy saying you don't pay for interviews or pay sources? The paper I once edited, the Philadelphia paper, did have a written policy about this and several other things.

KEN BODE: Gene, I am constant part-time employee at CNN, and I was once trying to get an interview with the guy who shot George Wallace. And they said for money you can do it. And CNN told me flatly they had a policy in their policy manual against paying for interviews period. So to my knowledge, unless that's changed, CNN would be that kind of a place.

A PARTICIPANT: But 60 Minutes or any of the TV news magazine shows, haven't they on some occasions paid for interviews?

KEN BODE: Every now and then, and that's when they tend to get burned. That's when they tend to wind up with a picture of a complicated scientific device that turns out to be the inside of a vacuum cleaner or something.

EUGENE ROBERTS: The issue is not so much the money but that it taints the interview. Do we agree on that to the extent that it's a question?

TONY BORDEN: The BBC definitely pays and that's why people go down there. When you're in London and ABC calls you, you sort of calculate it a little bit differently in terms of your time and whether you can be bothered. To paint an example of this was when Maggie O'Kane had to pay to do an interview with Mladic. And what she did to get around it was she made a great episode of the fact that she was going to have to pay, and then she filmed the paying and she kind of spit the Deutsche Mark out on the table. And that was largely part of the story. It turned out that the interview was actually rather stupid because it was just an argument between him and her about the payment and all the rest. But she made it very explicit that this was having to be done and she found it very unfortunate and she felt it colored very much the story. I thought it was more showmanship than journalism, but at least that was one way to do it.

A PARTICIPANT: I think the BBC issue does raise a very interesting ethical question. In the old days they didn't pay politicians. I don't think they do that much anymore. But one of the principles that work in BBC radio is you don't pay an Arcan, you don't pay a primary source. You're paying for expertise, you’re paying for a body of knowledge that somebody possesses that you want to exploit. That is the theoretical principle. Of course, it's there to be violated all the time. But that was just part of the thinking at BBC on how you pay for interviews.

TOM GJELTEN: Well, I'm going to twist this around a little bit. So I think we're all in agreement you don't pay some warlord for an interview. But what about if you interview some woman who's just seen her husband killed in front of her and her house burned down, and she's obviously a victim of ethnic cleansing. She's now left with her children to take care of and she spills her story out to you, and then at the end asks you if you could give her $50 or something to help her in her time of need. Is there any difference between paying in that sense a victim even if it's out of your own pocket, but when she presents it as something in exchange for the story that she has shared?

GARY KNIGHT: I think there is a big difference between somebody asking you for money for an interview and then someone giving you an interview, and someone who because you're wealthy and you're in a position to help them asks you to help them afterwards. I think it's a really fundamental difference.

A PARTICIPANT: Have you been in that situation, Gary?

GARY KNIGHT: Several times, yes. I have no hesitation giving money to refugees or anybody in need, not at all, but I would not give money to people for an interview. I think there's a really fundamental difference there.

THOM SHANKER: Is there a difference between a photographer doing that and someone who has to write the story from the interview, casting this person in a more dramatic, less dramatic light? And is it important to note what you've done?

A PARTICIPANT: I don't think there is a difference between a photographer and a writer doing it. I think it's a moral issue and it's the same for everyone. I think it's worth remembering it. But I don't know if the money you give to someone influences what you're doing, and if so then you shouldn't do it, you shouldn't broadcast or publish the interview. But in the scenario just presented, I don't think that was the case.

EUGENE ROBERTS: In this country it would be dangerous to do it domestically. I once had a reporter who bought a child an ice cream cone, and then an hour later was invited into a house by the same child. And the mother walked in to find the reporter in the house and thought her privacy was invaded. And then when she heard about the ice cream cone, she contended her child was bribed and sued for invasion of privacy, and it was an awkward case.

SUSAN MOELLER: But isn't that more about a child and about the moral responsibility of approaching a child than it is about giving aide to someone you have given an interview to? That seems to me a fundamental difference. I mean I don't know how old this particular child was, but if it was literally a child, then that to me complicates the issue immensely.

JOHN OWEN: Just again as a frame of reference, I sat as a juror on the London Press Club awards this year, and most of the finalists were scoops based on having paid for the source, the Jeffrey Archer case being the most outstanding one that came to mind. I even brought it up, I said is it an issue at all the fact that the source has been bought? They said no, this wasn't an issue.

A PARTICIPANT: Tom, could I through in another scenario backing up a couple of steps to the using of other people's telephones. I've never been a war correspondent myself, but suppose there was a situation where you're reporting on a massacre. The only way to get it out is to file on the "perpetrator's equipment." And one of your sources is one of the soldiers who participated and you've got to dictate that right into your telephone. And maybe you've got an editor who wants to know the rank or position of this person to get a reliability on this source. I could imagine that could be difficult.

I've been in far less dramatic circumstances, cases traveling with U.S. officials to go to some news event and then hopping right on the plane, and the only way to file is over the U.S. Government on the airplane telephone. I've had actually stories filed to the Pentagon and then the Pentagon faxed it over to my newsroom to be typed into the system which I was very uncomfortable with. But really it was a situation where it was going to be eight or nine hours if I didn't do it that way.

But I'd be interested in what some of the people who have been war correspondents would have to say about how you deal with sourcing when somebody's listening right in to you dictating.

A PARTICIPANT: Well, that's a situation where you hope that they don't understand your English too well.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Just a historical footnote. In Vietnam in the 1960s, it literally was impossible to make a phone call without using the U.S. military lines. There was no civilian telephone system that worked.

THOM SHANKER: Just to tighten the noose around the editor and the correspondent one more inch. A fragile armistice has now been imposed in this mythical land which we're speaking of, and U.S. peacekeepers are on the ground. While traveling with some of the guerrillas still up in the hills, the correspondent learns firsthand specific details about an impending attack on U.S. peacekeepers. What is the correspondent's obligation? And they are well armed, they are smart, they are quick. What's the correspondent's obligation?

FRANK SMYTH: To pass on that information would put him or her at risk, right? So I think when you go into that situation and you know something like that is going to happen, you've already made an agreement that you're not going to pass it on. Similarly, if you're traveling with American forces and you find out that they're going to attack a guerilla target, it would be inappropriate for you to pass that information on. But whomever you're traveling with, I think once you make that source agreement, you have to honor it.

TOM GJELTEN: Would that bother you if in fact that ambush took place and if you had had an opportunity to alert them to it and you passed it up?

FRANK SMYTH: Sure, of course. But I think you'd have to honor your agreement.

LOREN: I'd go along with that. I think we are not, as a journalist, supposed to be taking sides. You're not an American and you're not a guerilla. You're there as an observer. And even if it's your country and your government, you're supposed to report it. You can't let your own nationality interfere. And if you start getting into that, you're losing sight of what the real mission of the ideal of objective journalism is.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Do you have problems with that?

A PARTICIPANT: No, I don't. I would hope that most non-journalists could appreciate that by not doing something you're being ethical. But what about when your reporting is going to effect an advantage to one side or another? You're going to report what you saw but it's during the battle that information is going to get to another side, it will affect the outcome.

A PARTICIPANT: We pose questions, we don't answer them.

RON HAVIV: I think you ought to get the hell out of wherever you are before you file. It's one thing that hasn't quite come up today. There are situations in which you gather a story and it is unwise to try and file it where you are. It is much smarter to leave and just let everything hit the fan.

A PARTICIPANT: I was thinking about affecting in a dramatic way the outcome of the story you're covering.

RON HAVIV: But my point is that it does put the reporter in danger rather quickly if it's going to endanger the force that he's with. Especially they will look to him, and they will blame him and probably do something to him.

TOM GJELTEN: There have been many cases where news organizations have voluntarily withheld stories because of a concern that premature publication of a broadcast could do exactly that. That's already happened.

LOREN: (Inaudible) example. The New York Times just (inaudible) and didn't publish when they had advance notice that it was happening. And I think they've been over the years highly criticized by a lot of media for, again, taking a nationalists point of view, applying nationalism to journalism.

EUGENE ROBERTS: And Kennedy said later he wished the Times had reported, that it would have saved him a lot of --

A PARTICIPANT: Well, I think you enter into a source agreement --

FRANK SMYTH: I think if there's a major offensive being planned, you want to indicate that something's happening and there's a military buildup. But you don't want to report something or pass on information that's going to give one side an advantage over the other. I think a way you could complicate that scenario would be what if you're traveling with an insurgent movement and they're planning not a military attack but a war crime. They're planning to put a bomb in a market or a massacre. I think in that situation you have a real problem, and I would be very uncomfortable knowing that a war crime is going to take place not doing whatever I could to pass on the information to people to prevent that. Then I think you'd want to avoid traveling or making a source agreement with parties that are going to commit those kinds of abuses. But that I think would be a real dilemma. If you're with an insurgent movement and you know they're going to plan a major war crime, you're then in a real dilemma because you want to not violate your source agreement, but you don't want to become a party to that act.

MICHAEL MCIVOR: So to follow up on Tony, you'd protect 20 innocent civilians if you could, but you wouldn't protect 20 American troops?

FRANK SMYTH: Exactly.

TOM GJELTEN: But the reason that you would consider violating your source agreement is presumably because you have other obligations besides your journalistic obligations. You have some moral obligations as a human being.

FRANK SMYTH: Well, in terms of what we're talking about in terms of war crimes, I think there's a real difference between covering a war and covering people that are engaged in different kind of activities for military purposes and out and out terrorism or people that are using war crimes for military purposes. I think there's a real distinction there.

THOM SHANKER: Suppose that the scenario was a war crime. For example an armistice has been signed. The American troops are now there as peacekeepers. Would you supply information that could help prevent an attack on them?

A PARTICIPANT: So if your scenario was a war crime, would you change your response?

A PARTICIPANT: Well, I'm not so sure that necessarily constitutes a war crime in the same way that attacking a civilian hospital would constitute a war crime.

TOM GJELTEN: This scenario that Tom just mentioned, James Fowler writes about this in Breaking the News. It was actually laid out to I think Peter Jennings, Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, and then I think it was William Westmoreland and somebody else on the other side. And when it was presented with media representatives on one side and military representatives on the other side, it just triggered this explosion or rage from the military because, in fact, the journalists gave exactly the same answer that you did. For the military, it just capsulated why they hate the media and why they don't feel they can trust the media. That members of their own national media would not feel compelled to come to their aid in that situation. It was a scenario that in fact really did reveal that lack of trust between the military and the news media. I had a question on war crimes on a slightly different note. I wanted to ask the panel and also any of the editors who want to chime in. If you have a reporter in the field and they witness a war crime, what is their responsibility, what's the propriety of them testifying and opening their notebooks of any information that has not been published in their 600 word story or the two or three photographs?

EUGENE ROBERTS: You're ahead of us. That's our last question, but we can swing into it now. I would hate the session to finish without us addressing this head on. So let's right now confront the situation in which a correspondent has witnessed and written about a war crime and is contacted by lawyers for the international tribune investigating the atrocities. Should the correspondent meet with the investigators? And is there a difference between meeting with the investigators and being asked to testify, and do you in the end testify? And do you turn over your raw outtakes of film including some that were never published? Do you turn that over to the tribunal?

A PARTICIPANT: I don't know why you would not. In fact to a lot of the stuff that I've heard in this session, my mental response is yes, why wouldn't you. So maybe you should say what the arguments against it are. If you're being asked by an international tribunal to do something in support of prosecuting something that is obviously or appears to be a great moral crime, I don't know what the impediments are. Maybe you can tell me.

TOM GJELTEN: Ron, you mentioned that you would prefer that they just rely on your public record.

RON HAVIV: That's right. I would hope that they'd be able to make their case using photographs that were published. It's a difficult thing I think. It's a difficult line to cross between being an objective journalist and then having your material used in way or another. I mean you can say if your photographs or your writing is going to be used for the international war crimes tribunal, most people think that's a good idea, but there are people that are also against that. And maybe in another case it could be reversed where they would say since your photographs were used for this, then they should be used for something else. And so where do you draw the line on what's good an what's bad? My photographs that are published are out there in the public domain, and they can be utilized as they want. They're up to public interpretation and they're there as documents and as evidence.

EUGENE ROBERTS: I was before and between editorships a reporter for a long time covering civil rights in the U.S. and the rise of black power movements in the U.S. And there was something in the United States called the Earl Caldwell case about a black reporter for The New York Times who went into a Black Panther headquarters. He was then subpoenaed by a grand jury to tell what he had seen inside the headquarters, presumably arms, and he was going to be asked about it. He decided it would compromise his objectivity, that it would destroy him forever covering black power movements in America, and he refused to testify. Out of this, an organization was born, the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press, which exists to this day. And a whole generation of American editors and reporters came conditioned to the downside of testifying and departing from a role of neutrality in that it could (a) compromise you from getting access, and (b) compromise your entire newspaper. Is it really different in a war crimes situation as opposed to domestic racial coverage? I don't pretend to have the answer, I am asking the question.

A PARTICIPANT: I don't really see that there's that much difference. One of the things we do at our paper and some other papers I've worked on, is that we will testify to the truthfulness of that which we have published, whether it's photo or whether it's print, but that we will resist giving up anything else. And I think that's really a good rule to live by because once you start giving things up, where do you stop?

EUGENE ROBERTS: Right. Is there ever a situation in which you would provide a prosecutor with photographs you refused to give, for space reasons or otherwise, to your readers? Would anyone see a difference there?

TONY BORDEN: Well, depending on your source of agreement. I mean if you had a great story but the bloody editor didn't publish it. There's no reason why the tribunal might have a different editorial judgment, as it were. But if it broke the source agreement, then that's a different case.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Gary, what would you do?

GARY KNIGHT: I don't know what I'd do but frankly speaking what I do often is try and get people like Arcan banged up in the Hague to be really honest with you. I don't choose to sit on the fence with many of these issues.

I think it's a very difficult question. We have a situation in England where the government has passed laws and journalists are obliged to hand over notebooks and stuff, and I would resist that to the death. But I do think there are times certainly when as an individual I would certainly hand over information if I felt that a war crime had been committed or murder had been committed.

A PARTICIPANT: I wanted to draw the analogy to what's happened in psychiatry over the last several years where we have lost our privilege and there now are laws like the Tarisaff (phonetic) decision which force us to report things that patients have revealed to us. So I'm all for your resisting the compulsion to report what you've learned whether it's a War Crime Tribunal or not. Because in criminal cases domestically, they'll point to what journalists are doing in war crime areas if the whole field of journalism says in this case we're not going to resist. But I think these other instances where someone willing wants to cooperate is fine.

TOM GJELTEN: That's an important distinction because I think the scenario stipulates that this would be voluntary, that it's not whether you would be forced to testify but whether there would be anything wrong with voluntarily agreeing to testify.

EUGENE ROBERTS: But any trial is by nature an adversarial proceeding. And if you have a different rule for the defense and the prosecution or for the prosecution as opposed to the defense, could it not get you into problems and taint your objectivity? I'm raising that question.

THOM SHANKER: And does it jeopardize future journalists in the field with all of the camps? And aren't we once again going to be having bounties on our heads everywhere we go?

MICHAEL MCIVOR: What we do in practice here in the states or in the UK and what you do when confronted with a massive human rights violation may be two entirely different things. In the face of massive human rights violation, one with genocide perhaps, one cannot be neutral. And I would then pose it, as we're in this debate and as we're talking about war crimes, is this a place that breaks the kind of neutrality which journalists try so hard in most circumstances to adhere to?

EUGENE ROBERTS: The editor in back of you and to the right had an interesting observation. The question is testifying to anything other than the accuracy of what you reported. If you knew of something really important and withheld it from your readers and are now giving it to the tribunal, what sort of problem is this? And are you likely to have anything so important that it would make a real difference in a trial that you wouldn't have shared previously with your readers?

SUSAN MOELER: We need to make a point about this question that you raised about public record. I mean it's not infrequent that photographers in the field don't choose which photographs appear. And at times it’s that they don't have control over which photographs appear and sometimes in certain circumstances they don't even know which ones have been selected to appear depending on deadlines and all kinds of things. So if you were the photographer in that situation- maybe this is a question for Ron and Gary- why would you necessarily rely on the public record of your work versus if you're the editor, there's something intentional there. You have the body of work that you're choosing from, and then I begin to understand what the editor behind me said in terms of I stand behind what I published. They seem different concerns.

THOM SHANKER: The choice of page one art from a story is so different from what the Tribunal would want for evidentiary purposes: insignia, numbers, names perhaps, that they would want the whole role. And yes, you could stand by this as an accurate photograph that ran on page one of the Plain Dealer. We know the photographer, it's true. But that's irrelevant because what the tribunal wants is mug shots of the entire company going in with all of their insignia.

EUGENE ROBERTS: But for the sake of argument, photographers already have probably the most unsafe job known to man or woman. Suppose they receive publicity as being the star crucial witness in war crimes tribunals. To what degree does this make an already mind-boggling dangerous job dangerous almost beyond comprehension, and should this matter?

SUSAN MOELER: What I was saying earlier about public record is that for me, when I have been a photographer, just thinking about it now is academic. I would say the photographer wouldn't necessarily want to put any of it. I mean it would be an individual choice, but wouldn't necessarily want to put any of it on because of not in a sense being the decision maker.

TOM GJELTEN: One thing to keep in mind I think is that we're talking here about a crime having been committed. And if any of us are out on a story and while we're reporting the story we see somebody murdered in front of us. we see the guy pull out the gun, pull the trigger and shoot the guy. I doubt any of us would have any hesitation about being a willing witness to the police to something that we saw even though we saw it while performing our journalistic functions, because there's a certain civic responsibility that you have when you witness a crime being committed.

THOM SHANKER: If it's related to the story you're reporting, it's one thing. If it's completely unrelated, that’s different. We had the situation at The Times with the Capitol Hill shootings, last year I guess. John Broder, our White House correspondent, was crossing to the White House, and had a conversation that morning with the fellow who later shot up the Capitol. Now our question was the next day when we saw the picture of the guy, what's John Broder's obligation? He spoke with the lawyers. It was very clear he gathered evidence of a crime because this man was ranting and raving about his intentions. John gathered that wholly unrelated to his duties as a White House correspondent. There was absolutely nothing to bar him from talking to the Secret Service and the Washington Police about what he saw crossing Lafayette Park.

SUSAN MOELLER: In that scenario, you have no ongoing relationship with what you've seen, so there's no inhibitions against testifying. But in the situation that Thom Shanker has suggested, you do have an ongoing relationship, and so your obligations, both professionally, personally and otherwise are very different.

A PARTICIPANT: If I could just tweak the scenario a little bit. There seems to be a focus on the exposure of the media as assisting as being an important issue. Will reporters be in danger if they're known to be assisting? What if it was just U.S. intelligence that wanted the entire roll of film from the massacre site? It would never be known publicly, it would just be back channel, here's the role of film, you do your own soil analysis and insignia checks. I still have kind of a problem with that even though there's no exposure whatsoever for the media, and there's no kind of pall cast case over the profession by what's been done.

THOM SHANKER: What can you trade for it?

LOREN: A lot has changed over the years, but one of the protections journalists had was there was a sense of neutrality. You were viewed, except when you got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, with acceptance among belligerents. As is said, it's changing somewhat. You had a certain neutrality, and I think this goes to the question. You don't want to ever be perceived as being of one side, and you certainly don't want to ever be perceived as aiding intelligence of one side or the other or being a collaborator with intelligence. Most of us have worked out there. One of the biggest dangers we've had is everyone thinks, oh, you're an American, you're asking embarrassing questions about this and that, you must be a spook. We spend a lot of times saying we're not. I think the minute it's perceived that you have in fact gone home and briefed the CIA of things you've seen, or opened yourself up to trial to support a legal case, you would in the long-term endanger the whole perception of journalists in future conflicts.

And just to answer Tom, if you saw this guy shot in front of you in the course of it, I would hope you'd have it in your radio story and describe it. And that's what could be played at any tribunal. I think we stand behind what we publish or broadcast. I agree with the lady from the Plain Dealer, that's what we say, we'll testify to the honesty of this as we put out. To get into what your notes are and other stuff I think is really dangerous for the future.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Maybe there's a difference between foreign and domestic, but I know of a reporter who allegedly in 1962 in Albany, Georgia, while covering the civil rights movement there, traded information on a regular basis with the police chief in Albany. He got things as well as gave things and to this day, 39 years later, is known by his colleagues as Fink. Is this a problem?

GARY KNIGHT: There’s a difference between on the record/off the record. I think if a guerilla group takes you in and, for example, they let you freely work, then I certainly wouldn't under any circumstances hand anything over to the CIA ever or any of their equivalents. That's completely off the agenda. But I can't say that I would never hand anything over to the War Crimes Tribunal or UNHCI if it was going to help them, for example. I do think there is a difference, and there's a very fine line I accept. But there is a point where you have to think morally.

TONY BORDEN: Just reflecting on what you would say. He's not here and I wonder what he would say, but I guess Ed Vulliamy just wouldn't have thought about it in a second. It wasn't a conflict to him, he knew what he was doing. And to give information to the tribunal, that’s partly Ed being very passionate about the subject. But if you want to defend journalism, I think it's also an American vs. European thing, and the Europeans are just simply not going to follow you on this that much as a colleague is saying. So you may feel like you've put a moral line in the sand in terms of how you're operating, but all your Brits and French and other European colleagues are simply not going to be working with a different set of ethics in their mind.

EUGENE ROBERTS: Again, there may be no right or wrong to the answer. It may be different depending on circumstances. But the stakes are sufficiently high that you don't want to stumble into the middle of this without having really thought about it, discussed it. You don't want to make an impulsive move in this area I think.

FRANK OCHBERG: I wanted to ask how you feel about the reporter or the photographer in particular who goes through roles and realizes that he or she has something that now is newsworthy, that is going to be significant in a trial. And rather than give it to the prosecutor or the defense publicizes it, puts it on the Web, makes it public. Is that a way out of this ethical dilemma?

EUGENE ROBERTS: I think that may indeed be a way out. And even before you get to the Web, if you're reporting for a publication other than the Web, you might want to resubmit it as a story. I think that's an excellent way out, actually.

KEN BODE: We're talking about all these things as though it's just a journalist's decision what to do. If you find yourself in the middle of a court case on this and your reporter's notes are subpoenaed, or in the broadcast equivalent the videotape that is shot but not used is subpoenaed, besides certain news organizations’ policies about this, what's the present state of the law about whether this stuff has to be turned over? Can anyone clarify that? If my videotape is subpoenaed and my news organization says you can't have it, can they make that stick or are they going to have to turn it over?

EUGENE ROBERTS: The answer in the U.S. is different depending on the local jurisdiction. And there have been instances in which reporters have risked jail rather than compromise on this. There have been other instances in which it hasn't been necessary to risk jail because there's a source protection law, there's a shield law.

A PARTICIPANT: Gene, can I just follow up on your remark? If we've decided it is not news when we went to press, but now we find it's involved in a trial, do we then publish it and get mixed up in the trial by publishing it?

EUGENE ROBERTS: Isn't it a different ball game if you say to the readers that it is now an issue and some things that did not seem significant at the time now take on a significance because of the tribunal. And here are six photographs we didn't publish, here they are, and let the chips fall where they may. In the end, that material becomes available to everyone, but it's not a reporter or photographer becoming a star witness in an adversarial proceeding.

JOHN OWEN: There's been a fascinating case in Britain which has to do with a war crime but it got acted out in a local defamation suit. ITN, the big news network, took a small publication called Living Marxism to court, sued them basically for Living Marxism suggesting that its award winning coverage of the now world famous video taken of the man behind the so called barbed wire was faked. And ITN took Living Marxism to court. But interestingly, in the course of the actual trial- and I was in the courtroom- ITN voluntarily showed every bit of its outtakes over two days, played every bit of video that had been taken at the camps. And again, they did it voluntarily. But I suppose if it had been wrong footed the other way, that would have been something you would have thought they would have fought to the death to get them to produce that video. They won by the way.

A PARTICIPANT: I'm from the former Yugoslavia, but now I live in Canada, and I am very happy that I have a chance to share this experience with you. We were talking today about very important issue like crimes of war, responsibility of journalism, and so on.

You raised a lot of questions, but I didn't realize that we raised one very important question- that is, the question about the truth. If you know that the casualty of the war is the truth, in that case we have to ask where is the truth? Who is one who will decide where is the truth and what is the truth? If we follow some examples, I just want to clarify my position that you know that I am not in favor of any sides, I'm just talking from general point of view. I left Yugoslavia because I suffered a lot from the Milosevic regime. I used to write against his regime. He shot down my magazine in which I was editor-in-chief called Interview. They also cut off my TV program. I was editor and host and author, and it was a very popular TV program.

I have a lot of reasons to be really against everything that's going on in my previous country since I consider now Canada as my country. But recently, a few months ago, I was watching TV I guess that was ABC in Canada. The story was about one journalist from England. She made one story about Ramonda in Kosovo. I hope that you heard about that story. That story appears in the beginning as the truth, but finally I realized it is a lie. What are we doing now after all, how many actions have we done following that first truth, and what are we going to do after that when we realize this is a lie? Thank you very much.

A PARTICIPANT: On that one point, on her issues of what happens if you're covering a war crime and the person lies to you, how do you as a journalist handle it, and I think she did it in a model fashion.

Just one postscript on the issue of ITN and their lawsuit against Living Marxism. The reason this case came about was because ITN very generously was working with the tribunal in The Hague during the very first case they had, the Tadic case. They turned over not just their film but also their outtakes. And a person who calls himself a journalist who works for Living Marxism who wrote the article was actually testifying on the side of the defense of Tadic. That side, of course, used the discovery process, and they obtained all of the films, all the outtakes. This journalist, his name is Thomas Deichmann, took the outtakes, and without really doing research, asserted based on the material that he had gotten through the discovery process that ITN had lied, that they had set the whole thing up. So I think ITN probably feels very chastened by the experience of having worked with the tribunal because they had cooperated fully.

I'm not trying to say one should or one shouldn't. I have a personal theory that you really ought to just see what impact does the testimony have in a pragmatic sense on your ability to continue reporting. It's a very important question. Do you cross the line so much that you can't continue doing the story? And if so, then you really have to think seriously about it.

But in this case, ITN was trying to do its best to support the tribunal, and as a result they wound up in a case of defamation and libel, and they themselves had to go to court.

EUGENE ROBERTS: I want to thank you, as we draw to a close, for your interest and participation. No one seemed shy. One of the great advantages of this kind of discussion, it seems to me, as journalists often when an emergency situation arises, we don't have time to really think about it. We have to act almost by conditioned reflex. And seminars like this and discussion groups like this allow us to sharpen our conditioned responses ahead of time. So I thank you for helping.

Roy Gutman, Bio.
International Security Reporter, Newsday, President, Crimes of War Project

Eugene Roberts, Bio.
University of Maryland School of Communication

Thom Shanker, Bio.
Assistant Washington Editor, The New York Times

Tom Gjelten, Bio.
Foreign Correspondent, National Public Radio

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