By Ken Stern 

Where women journalists are most needed

A book review —

 


Our soldiers fight to protect the nation’s freedom.

Journalists report on war so families and the public back home know the facts and truth of the soldiers experience. Journalists tell what is actually happening, as opposed to what the military and the government say.

Journalists in wars are protecting democracy – as much as our soldiers.

In 1960 no newspaper had women war correspondents. The U.S. military had rules regulating all journalists coverage during war. Since President Johnson refused to declare war in Vietnam, regulations limiting reporter access did not apply. That is why coverage was so thorough and why Frances FitzGerald, Catherine Leroy and Kate Webb became pioneering war correspondents in the late 1960s.

Elizabeth Becker, who flew from Seattle to Phnom Penh, went later, in 1973. Her groundbreaking reporting from Cambodia is also part of her book “You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War.”

Becker, like Leroy and Webb, started the same way: with a one way ticket to southeast Asia.

FitzGerald, is best known for her seminal book, “Fire in the Lake,” which won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize. She is an important American writer. She was born into extreme privilege, her parents rich, accomplished and well known. Her father was a CIA deputy director in the 1960s.

“Without her advantages it is hard to imagine how FitzGerald could have beaten the odds against a woman becoming a war correspondent in Vietnam, enduring the snub, the refusal to take her seriously or acknowledge her accomplishments,” Becker writes.

Her vantage point allowed her to understand, when she arrived in March 1966, that she was covering the most important story in the world.

In Atlantic Monthly, New York Times and other magazines reporting, she emphasized Vietnamese history, culture and its people. Becker’s summary: “Her key thesis was there was no moral, political or practical reason for the United States to wage the Vietnam War when the U.S. had no chance of victory.”

Leroy was French. Her country had colonized Indochina and was defeated in Vietnam in 1954.

While learning to skydive in 1965, she met both a French Foreign Legionnaire and a journalist. That was her introduction to the war. Becker quotes her: “’I persuaded myself that if I could not be a blues singer like Billie Holiday, I would be a photographer.’”

She also saw that “The biggest story in the world right now is the Vietnam War.” She flew to Saigon in February 1966 and convinced the AP photography editor to give her press credentials. A year later she was accompanying U.S. troops in the first and only offensive airborne assault as the only photographer with parachuting qualifications.

Her photographs from the day became historic.

Throughout, she captured soldiers and civilians with an up close, personal quality. She was a success.

But journalists and photographers ostracized her. Some filed complaints with the military, lying about her behavior and conduct. Her press credentials were pulled. No journalist defended her.

Leroy got staff of the hospital ship, where her alleged bad behavior took place, to refute the charges, their writing she had a “warm invitation to return.”

Webb, an Australian, went from being a “news cadet” at the Mirror in Sydney to Vietnam, prompted by Johnson’s October 1966 state visit. The Mirror’s editors were content to print wire service stories. Webb flew to Vietnam with her typewriter but without a job. There she bought her own combat gear and freelanced until hired by UPI in 1968. Her reporting focused on the South Vietnamese army. She wanted to know if a democratic and competent government could develop independently of the Americans.

Webb went to Cambodia after President Nixon expanded the war in 1970. A year later, covering a patrol of Cambodian soldiers, she was one of six journalists captured by North Vietnamese troops. They were held as prisoners of war for 24 days.

These three journalists, along with Becker and a handful of other women covering the war, were told by male journalists and the milirary that they did not belong there.

Each of them would have been hired, trained and mentored if they were men. Instead, they made their own way. Their determination opened up war reporting to women. Critically, their work changed the way the public, sees, hears, reads and understands war then and now.

 

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