|
During one ambush with her convoy Chicago Tribune correspondent Kirsten Scharnberg remembers crouching low behind an armored vehicle while taking notes. Her heart was racing, but she was unable to stop writing about the events occurring around her.
“I did often find myself in this zone where I was so busy watching what was happening and writing things down that I almost forgot to be scared,” Scharnberg said. “It was almost like being able to use your notebook and your words like a video camera and just show readers exactly what an ambush looked like and felt like, what the bomb smoke smelled like and what the helicopters sounded like.”
Scharnberg, (B.A. 1998), a former Daily Iowan editor, is currently part of a team of correspondents covering the war for the Tribune. She also spent nearly three months reporting in Iraq in 2003.
Scharnberg and the 101st Airborne Division spent the first couple of weeks in the region of Kuwait, just south of the Iraq border, and crossed into Iraq shortly after the war had officially started. Crossing the border was a very moving experience for her.
She recalls seeing the fence that had once delineated the border between the two countries, and as they drove over that narrow path, she knew she was crossing into an active war zone.
“Were there chemical weapons? Were there biological weapons? How much would the Pentagon actually hold to their promise of putting journalists on the front lines?” Scharnberg recalled asking herself.
Scharnberg found herself dodging bullets as much as the soldiers around her. Men in her convoy were shot, she knew there was no going back, and she indeed found herself reporting from the front lines.
Scharnberg recalled the panic as the soldiers attempted to patch up their wounded comrades while also trying to defend themselves against enemy fire.
During these times she often felt as if she was not the intended target. But as she looked back, she realized that she was as much of a target as the soldiers around her.
“You often found yourself teetering between two urges; the human urge to go back to safety and the journalist’s urge to go even closer to the conflict and the action,” Scharnberg said.
Scharnberg began to develop her skills at The Daily Iowan, where she worked first as a reporter, then an editor, before graduating.
Scharnberg did not imagine writing or wanting to write reports about terrorism, the intelligence community, or the military. What she really wanted to do was write long, narrative, feature-based stories.
Reporting from the front lines in the middle of a war changed her past career goals.
“Now few stories interest me as much as military stories do,” Scharnberg said.
Bill Casey, publisher of The Daily Iowan, remembers Scharnberg as a news person. Casey said Scharnberg understood what news was and she was not afraid to go after it.
“She was a very aggressive reporter who never backed down from a story,” Casey said.
That attitude helped her in Iraq. Despite all the dangers Scharnberg was able to ignore them and do her job.
In 2003, war reporters in Iraq weren’t using as much security as they do now. Today, many journalists travel with armed guards because of increased terror threats on reporters.
“It used to be that journalists felt relatively safe in most war zones, or at least we felt like we weren’t the intended target,” Scharnberg said. “Now we are.”
In a spring 2003 Iowa Journalist article, Scharnberg said she was only diffrent from the soldiers in terms of their possessions.
“The journalists have laptops and cameras; the soldiers have guns,” she said.
This is all becoming very different, especially since journalists have become targets of insurgents.
Now Scharnberg and other journalists must be more aware of their surroundings and must know how to defend themselves in dangerous situations.
Scharnberg returned to Iraq in October and is unsure how long she will be there this time.
Before leaving, Scharnberg received intense training with security advisers who helped her and other Chicago Tribune reporters make decisions about how to protect themselves in Iraq.
Changes are taking place in Iraq, and with more intense fighting and the high level of terrorist kidnappings, Scharnberg knows that this time she has to take a different approach to reporting the war.
“The realities are now very different than they were when I last left, and that has to change the way we go about our reporting,” she said. “It’s unfortunate, it’s sobering and scary, but it simply is and so we have to adapt to that reality.”
During her time in Iraq she faced challenges within herself, not only as a person, but also as a reporter. Scharnberg often had urges to leave; she wanted to get away from the danger, the close calls and the front lines. But she knew how important it was for her to be there, still reporting.
“Every day it felt so important and historic to be there,” she said. “Even at my most tired and dirty and frustrated moments, I realized what an extreme privilege and responsibility it was to be there witnessing such incredible moments of history.”
— Layla Kokemuller |
