In his mem­oir “Night”, the author Elie Weisel wrote: “To for­get the dead would be akin to killing them a sec­ond time.” As you read this, glass­es have been, or are being raised to ensure that does not hap­pen to Paul Dou­glas and James Brolan.

Paul and James were killed, and cor­re­spon­dent Kim­ber­ly Dozi­er was hor­rif­i­cal­ly wound­ed, by a car bomb on a Bagh­dad street cor­ner  on May 29, 2006. They were, iron­i­cal­ly, doing a sto­ry about Amer­i­can troops spend­ing Memo­r­i­al Day on patrol.
U.S. Army Capt. James Funkhouser and an Iraqi trans­la­tor we still only know as ‘”Sam” were killed in the same explosion.
Reporters, pro­duc­ers and cam­era crews who place them­selves in har­m’s way do it out of choice, and while that may seem irra­tional, Paul, James and Kim­ber­ly would have assessed the sto­ry as worth the risk.
None of us who cov­er wars are so vain as to think we can change the world. But we believe we can make a dif­fer­ence. If we do our jobs well, the excuse “we did­n’t know” can­not be used to jus­ti­fy inac­tion or indif­fer­ence in the face of evil or suf­fer­ing or injus­tice. You did know, because we who sur­vived and those like Paul and James and Kim­ber­ly and too many oth­ers who have died and been injured went there, and told you.
So what was spe­cial about Paul and James, you might ask?
Well…
To call Paul Dou­glas “larg­er than life” isn’t a cliché, it’s a gross  understatement,
He was phys­i­cal­ly huge, black, shaven-head­ed, with a boom­ing voice that could silence a room with a syl­la­ble, and had a smile and a heart as big as his courage, which is anoth­er way of say­ing enormous.
Good cam­era­men must put emo­tion aside to do their  job, but if they lack empa­thy, their pic­tures will fail to cap­ture the essence of raw human emotion.
In the mad­ness of 1990s Sara­je­vo, you could­n’t go any­where with a TV cam­era with­out kids ask­ing if  “che­lo bon­bon” was with you. “Che­lo” is the pho­net­ic spelling of the Ser­bo-Croat word for bald. “Bon­bon” was what the kids called can­dy, They would lay siege to get one.
But when the huge bald black man showed up, they duti­ful­ly stood in  line for a bon­bon from the bulging pock­ets of his trade­mark fisherman’s vest, and that smile.
But woe betide any­one who tried to stop Paul get­ting a pic­ture he wanted.
When the Serbs were expelling eth­nic Alba­ni­ans from Koso­vo into Mace­do­nia, we fol­lowed a train full of refugees to a sid­ing. The scene could have been from the movie “Schindler’s List”, plead­ing hands stick­ing out of car­riage win­dows, peo­ple wail­ing inside, doors wired shut.
Sev­er­al armed Mace­don­ian police blocked us from approach­ing it. We argued fruit­less­ly for a few min­utes, then Paul said, in a calm and mea­sured tone, “Sor­ry mate, but I have to take pictures.”
By the time the police recov­ered from being uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly shoul­dered aside, he had the shots we needed.
In his his­to­ry of war report­ing, “Dying for the Truth”, author and for­mer war cor­re­spon­dent Paul Moor­croft wrote: “War cor­re­spon­dents are cru­cial to democ­ra­cy and the pub­lic’s dis­cov­ery of the truth. With­out the media, the temp­ta­tion to manip­u­late events with pro­pa­gan­da could be irre­sistible to politi­cians of all hues.”
Nobody manip­u­lat­ed James Brolan. In one leg­endary inci­dent,  a new­bie-to-a-war-zone pro­duc­er ordered him to take a high­er than accept­able risk because, “I’m in charge.”
James replied: “Appar­ent­ly not.”
A lacon­ic nature and laid back image belied James’ tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence and ded­i­ca­tion. Sound­men pro­vide the essen­tial, sub­tle under­pin­ning that make the dif­fer­ence between an aver­age and a great TV news story.
Watch a good sound­man work and often his micro­phone is not point­ing where the cam­era is aimed, because the ambi­ence, the deep­er mean­ing of the image, is sound com­ing from anoth­er direction.
James Brolan knew where to lis­ten. And man, he was fun to work with.
                      WHAT THEY DID

Vari­a­tions of the quote “The first casu­al­ty when war comes, is truth,” have been attrib­uted to  pun­dits and thinkers rang­ing from the ancient Greek writer Aes­cu­lus, to  Amer­i­can Sen­a­tor Hiram John­son in 1917.
The degree of truth is arguable accord­ing to point of view and agen­das, but not because jour­nal­ists are try­ing to hide the truth.
In too many cas­es, like Gaza, jour­nal­ists die because some­one else is try­ing to do so.
“Fake news” is a charge spewed by those who fear truth, who don’t want  light shone into their dark corners.
If you want or are will­ing to deal in and pur­vey it, the only thing you put in jeop­ardy is any pre­tence of hon­esty, objec­tiv­i­ty and principles.
It’s what you  get when peo­ple who pur­port to be jour­nal­ists base their report­ing on an ide­o­log­i­cal bent, as opposed to those will­ing to assess a risk and accept the odds on how much of their luck fund they’ve already spent.
Remem­ber that, and as we who knew James and Paul 20 years ago will con­tin­ue to do, hoist a glass in a homage and a toast,  so they do not suf­fer the fate Weisel warned against.

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