“Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly’s editor-at-large and a Washington Post columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war in Iraq, was killed Thursday night in a Humvee accident with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division.”
–The Washington Post, April 5, 2003
“David Bloom, the co-anchor of the weekend edition of NBC’s “Today” show, collapsed yesterday and died while covering the war in Iraq for the network. He was 39.”
–The New York Times, April 7, 2003
Michael Kelly and David Bloom were good men, and their writing and reporting informed and clarified. But neither man should have died. They should not have died because they should not have been in Iraq. They should have been at home, watching the war coverage with others–others, say, like their wives and young children.
In almost everything that has been written about Kelly and Bloom since their deaths, their families have been given only marginal mention. Personal details come only after encomiums, but when they do, they vacuum the breath from your lungs: Kelly was married and had two sons, one 6, the other 3. Bloom was also married and had three girls, all of whom are not yet teen-agers.
I don’t doubt that both men were devoted husbands and wonderful fathers. If asked the question, “Which is more important: your work or your kids?” I don’t doubt that both would have been offended at even being asked the question. Yet they chose to put their lives at risk in a place where they didn’t have to be. They didn’t have to enter the war, and their journalism was not necessary. Both had reached a point in their careers where they could have refused this assignment. Their reputations were established, and dozens of other journalists, without wives and kids and commitments beyond themselves, could have gone in place of Kelly and Bloom.
Why, then, did they do this?
The answer, perhaps, lies in the ethic of journalism. Journalists think of their profession in almost sacramental terms. The accumulation of information takes on a transcendent purpose. To be first on the scene, to be witness to “history in the making”– these desires intoxicate reporters and writers, and they take on the immediacy of categorical imperatives. To deny the impulse to do journalism becomes inconceivable. For Kelly and Bloom to have refused the chance to cover a war is probably like a doctor refusing to help the sick. It simply is not in their nature; it violates everything they’ve been trained to do, and everything they love.
Some of this devotion, of course, derives from the American faith in the free press and in the belief that a healthy democracy requires an informed public. Almost no American would have it any other way. However, the dogmatic adherence to news-gathering that is now on display in Iraq is disturbing. CNN, MSNBC and Fox cannot fathom the public going seconds without a fresh infusion of mostly stale data.
But surely the public mind can go a day without Wolf Blitzer. Surely NBC could have survived without sending a father of three into a tank to satisfy the viewers of “Nightly News.”
By all accounts, Kelly and Bloom were good men, and I do not doubt the goodness of their intentions. Their decision to go to Iraq, however, seems profoundly misguided, however much the media reframes it in heroic terms. They may have been great reporters, but how much does that really matter to their families, now?
War is hell, but for these journalists, it didn’t have to be.
Matt Emerson is a junior studying philosophy and political science.
