Reporting from the Ruins

Abstract

The heat and harsh light of the Holy Land — especially when the sun is high in the summer sky — can make covering difficult and dangerous stories particularly hard. The reflected glare of the sun’s rays at midday make you squint, closing one eye to a tiny slit if you are not wearing sunglasses; the sun’s heat — beating down from above, and bouncing back up from stone below — soon becomes uncomfortable; mouths and throats crave cool water. Proximity to death makes all these symptoms worse, and yet more easily ignored: drowned out by the thrill of being in the centre of a major story, a thrill that, at that moment, makes many journalists forget everything except their desire to tell that story. Reflection, and perhaps realization that they could themselves have been among the dead or wounded, often only comes later.