War Correspondent Shares Woes, Triumphs of the Job
By: Marwan Al-Assaf
Mass Communication Student
When journalists share too many details, it is bad taste because they can do their job well without being excessive with information, according to Lamia Radi, a veteran war correspondent who spoke to an audience of about 60 students, faculty, and staff on Nov. 23 at the campus theater.
The UH-GAF Mass Communications Department hosted Radi as a guest within the Media Speaker Series that was launched this semester. Radi shared her experience in covering conflicts and the unique challenges of working in a war zone.
War journalists today face a significant number of challenges while on the field, including threats to their security, meeting their basic physical needs, and navigating an increasingly complex information technology context. Radi’s work has taken her to conflict-torn Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, and Algeria, among others.
The first global news outlet that Radi worked for was Agence France-Presse, though she has also worked for various other organizations including Associated Press, Thomson-Reuters, and Sky News Arabia.
A fan of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, she boasted her mega scoop of interviewing him on the day his achieving the Nobel Prize was announced to the world. Her face-to-face interview repertoire includes a range of high-profile figures like the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Importantly, Radi iterated that despite the profound empathy she feels when reporting on human tragedy, she must ultimately write about it for people to know stories which would otherwise remain untold.
