A seminar for editors sponsored by The Crimes of War Project and The Freedom Forum

Day Two, Panel Two: War Crimes: The Elusive Story/How do You Use the Law?

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

c) When Sources Prove to be Liars
Nancy Durham, Canadian Broadcasting Corportation

EUGENE ROBERTS: Thank you. We go now to Nancy Durham, a freelance reporter based in London, who has a compelling personal story on when sources prove to be liars.

NANCY DURHAM: Thank you. I'm going to show a short film in a couple of minutes. But just to set it up I'd like to say that I've been a journalist for more than 20 years and working in zones of conflict or war over the last ten years or more. And for the last five I've been working on my own with a small video camera with all the new sort of digital gadgetry which gives me mobility. It lets me move around fairly discreetly. It's very, very inexpensive so it makes it attractive to people who might want to send a television crew there but couldn't afford to.

I work about half of the time for the CBC, but other than that I'm on my own working for other outlets, the BBC, Channel 4 News or whoever. But apart from the cheapness of working as a one-person band in a difficult place, I think that this way of reporting is terrific. Because it's cheap you can go and spend longer. You can do lots of follow-ups. And I think follow-up journalism is just fascinating. And I guess I have to admit there was a moment here when I thought I did one follow-up too many because of what I ended up discovering into my final trip into a certain area in Kosovo.

I think that's all I need to tell you about myself before we look at the film. The version that you're going to see was run on Channel 4 News. Well actually, just a little bit more. I decided throughout the conflict in Kosovo from the very beginning that my method of operation is to kind of get off the beaten track and not go where the other reporters are going. I can't compete with a big TV crew with a satellite dish anyway.

But I like the sort of human stories, the stories on the ground, the stories down this road. If everybody's going down that road I like to go a different way. It means, again, I've got longer to spend and I'm not racing for the same scoop back on the television.

And so I made a point during the Kosovo conflict of trying to follow the same group of people from a village were there weren't any mass graves. I mean, there were war crimes there and crimes against property and attacks on civilians. But in any case, it wasn't a place that was really big on the journalistic map.

So this little film actually has an introduction on it which sets it up a little bit. And I'm sure you're going to have questions and I've got a few things I'd like to say afterwards. But this is a six-minute film. It's a greatly shortened version to something I did for the CBC at the same time. If you'd like to run the film please?

[Film shown.]

I hate to complain about time. I had such a longer, better film that tells you more, there were so many more characters than this. It's a very complicated story. "When Sources Prove to be Liars" was the title. I guess it's obvious by my film "When Sources Prove to be Liars" I think you have to spill the beans, no question about it. And that's what I've tried to do. The fallout has just absolutely blown me away, or the reaction. I've had a huge response by mail and e-mail and telephone from Serbs from Albania, Serbs who say it's my fault that NATO came to bomb, Albanians who say we did have a lot of people who got killed, other people who think this is very heroic to be able to tell the truth. I've been stunned at the absolute cynicism of viewers who just expect journalists not to spill the beans in a case like this. That's really depressing to me to think of how much I've learned how cynical people are and how untrusting they are towards our work. And that's really thrown me for a loop.

I've been truly used by both sides remarkably I think. I mean, by her cause. And I'm not slamming her either. I mean, I can understand this and I understand what you do in war. But I'm really excited to make the front page of Politika, the Belgrade Daily. "Uncovering Lies," that kind of tells me. And not only that, it goes on for three pages. And I think in there I'm called a poor and naive journalist.

RTS, well back on the air not long after the bombing, anyway, took my documentary without asking. And I would have happily given it to them for nothing. And they ran it editing out all the bits that had anything to do with what they might have been up to in Kosovo. So they edited an 18-minute film down to suit themselves. What else do I need to tell you? I don't know. Maybe just an anecdote.

Eric Efran the editor of Brills Content--I've been doing some writing for Brills Content--
asked me when I went back to Kosovo when KFOR was about to open up the region. He said, "Keep your eyes open for me for a story that lifts back the veil of reporting and journalism that will tell people something about what it's really like to be a reporter in a war zone." And I was snooping around for about 12 days looking for NATO to be spinning something in a nasty way or just looking for all kinds of obvious things. And little did I know that the story was going to be right in front of me. And it was actually the story I was in pursuit of all the time. And I quite by chance almost discovered little Chad Dresser to be alive, happily. So that's just an anecdote. I thought Eric had really interesting insight that he could predict what it was I was going to find although he didn't know what the topic was going to be.

And I guess my last comment before I go to questions, if there are any, is that I would like to make a strong pitch to anybody here. I don't think there are TV editors here so I don't know if you have any influence. But I think that the way I work is really good and really valid and that experienced journalists with small cameras can bring an awful lot of foreign stories that no one either can afford or doesn't want to pay attention to.

I think sending journalists in between the wars when they're off the radar screen, like I was there on almost every trip to Kosovo before the bombardment. It just wasn't news. And I got some really good stories out of there. The Rwanda story is sort of a good story in a way, it's interesting.

But I got some important pictures, some important truths and I think that they had to be told and they were shown and they were popular and there was a market in the mainstream which really amazed me. So if anybody has anything to do with trying to encourage experienced journalists on their own with cameras, video journalists, I think they should do it in the same vein as my colleagues Gary and Ron were saying yesterday. There aren't very many–I'm one of the few mainstream one-woman bands working. There aren't very many people working like this. And I think it would be great if you could encourage more.

Thank you.