A war reporter's perspective

I just thought this was a good article.


When suffering gets personal

On his return from Afghanistan, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson reveals how his attitude to covering stories about violence and suffering has changed.

The explosion was just close by. The windows of my hotel billowed inwards like sails in a storm, and the walls shuddered.

A pause, then the alarms and sirens started up all round. My camera team and I got there quickly.

The stench of high explosive still hung over everything. The screaming had mostly stopped, and the rescue workers were dealing with the still-living and collecting up bits of bodies.

The police were starting to take out their frustration and anger on the photographers.

This was in Kabul just the other day but I have seen these things dozens and dozens of times during my career.

I have never been a great one for the kind of reporting that tells you how the journalist feels when something terrible happens.

It seems to me that we need reporters to be crisp and accurate and unexcitable, like ambulance crews. You certainly do not want an ambulance-man leaning over you and telling you how he feels about your injuries.

You just want him to say they will get you sorted out in no time flat.

But in Kabul the other day, and in Baghdad a couple of weeks earlier, I could not help noticing a change within myself.

I tried to find out dispassionately what had happened, of course, but when I looked at the bodies on their stretchers and the injured moaning in pain I felt a new kind of anger.

I knew immediately what it was all about....