Fetch the bolt cutters
A raw look at the terrifying decisions a reporter makes on whether to head into a war zone.
Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.
Fetch the bolt cutters.
I’ve been listening to Fiona Apple’s album of the same name. Created in 2020, the album reflects the anxiety and isolation of the pandemic — dogs bark in the background of her songs and Apple audibly breathes and allows other everyday indoor sounds to litter her tracks. Her album is a testament to the bizarreness of our lives at a frightening time in history. But the idea behind the album name is that we can break free of the feeling of confinement, that we still can find freedom no matter how trapped we feel.
In her own words: “It’s about breaking out of whatever prison you’ve allowed yourself to live in, whether you built that prison for yourself or whether it was built around you and you just accepted it. The message in the whole record is just: ‘Fetch the fucking bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation that you’re in — whatever it is that you don’t like.’”
That’s exactly the kind of situation I’ve been in. Stuck.
I’ve been wanting to write a post here on my insecurities about my upcoming trip to Ukraine, but my insecurities have kept me from writing it. It sounds all important or even brave to tell people: “I’m going to Ukraine in a couple weeks.” I get a bunch of “wows.” Blah blah blah. But I’ve mainly felt anxiety — not because of the bombs that may fall where I will be or because the trip is huge and unknown, but because I made a promise to myself long ago I’m not sure I’m able to keep.
It’s time to fetch the bolt cutters.
The promise I made was that I would never spend a large amount of money and/or psychic and emotional energy to cover something in person on a dangerous assignment that is already being covered well by somebody else. I’m not someone who wants to wander into war zones for no reason, or do the same reporting already being done fully and competently by others.
My time in the Democratic Republic of Congo met my conditions. I was the only reporter working on what I felt was an important story for years.
If my two-plus decades of reporting on trauma would be useful, if I would have unique access to sources — if what I could write would add to an important understanding of the issues — then I would undertake this kind of trip. I’m not interested in “being there” for the sake of being there. I will only put myself and my colleagues — my fixers, translators and drivers — as well as my sources, in danger if I could meet these basic requirements.
When I was recently invited to be part of a journalist symposium at Auschwitz in Poland, I knew this would be my chance to go back to Ukraine. The deciding factor to make the trip to the camp was 1) that the only way I think I could stomach visiting a camp would be to go with my journalist hat on, and 2) the organizers said that we will be exposed to things not open to the public. (I have no idea what that will entail, but it clinched it for me.)
Once in Poland, it’s only about a 17-hour overnight train ride to Kyiv. It’d be ridiculous to not go after having traveled the massive distance from Seattle to Poland. But, again, I wasn’t going to go for no good reason.
I had my reason.
I’d been given access to a story, one already in the public media arena, but with insider knowledge and contacts about specific, important parts of it. That’s the key: I knew I could bring something new and important to the story. Conditions met.
I decided to go.
Then everything — maybe — fell apart.
To say I’ve been on a low simmer of anxiety is probably an understatement. I’m on the little-sleep, daytime-distracted plan these days. I never miss deadlines (unless I explicitly discuss them with my editor) but managed to slide past one this last week without realizing.
I pitched my new Ukraine story to a few of my usual outlets. But all of them are wary of taking freelancer stories at this point. They’ll easily take stories if they’re strong once I’m home, but there are all kinds of security risks to offering support to a freelance journalist in a war zone. If I get blown up, injured, kidnapped, these outlets will not have my back, legally (although I know some of my editors would do everything they could to help, regardless).
In the end, it just means that I have to make my own way and hope that my outlets will take my stories as I pitch them from Ukraine, or when I get back.
I applied for a grant but didn’t get it. The grantors are already supporting a number of projects in Ukraine, including “one on my very topic,” which is absurd, considering how big my story is and the access I know I exclusively have, but so it goes. I’ve decided that as long as I have financial support, I can make this Substack my main outlet…
It’s endlessly frustrating to be a few years into my third decade of reporting and to be denied support at every level. The news industry has become timid. Like most Americans, editors fear lawsuits, despite the fact that freelancers like me buy our own thousands of dollars’ worth of body armor, medevac insurance and so on. It’s beyond disappointing. It makes me angry.
Having worked at the Committee to Protect Journalists for five years reporting on the outrageous mistreatment of journalists around the world, I believe strongly in outlets supporting freelancers. But, as the years have gone by, I’ve seen less and less of this.
So, reality is what it is.
The crux of my anxiety, however, is not to do with this lack of support. It’s to do with the feeling that my story will fall through.
Because I’ve been to Ukraine before, I don’t have to worry as much this time around about the complicated logistics of getting and being there. So my mind is worrying instead at my story like it’s a sore tooth. And, if I’m honest with myself, I think it’s not going to happen.
Because I now have contacts on the ground, I’ve been setting up meetings and doing a lot of pre-reporting. Meaning, I’m gathering as much string as I can about what I may find and who my sources could be. It also means that when I hit walls, I get even more nervous than I already am. And walls are everywhere on my story.
Because I’m a recovering control freak, I’ve got a running list of others stories I want to do as well, but I definitely don’t want to make such a major trip for a few little stories. I want to do work that matters. I also want to stop stressing because this is a situation I cannot entirely control.
I have to remind myself that you can’t know what you’ll find on a reporting trip. I certainly never expected last year, in Ukraine, to be handed left-behind Russian documents that included top-secret code names and call signs. Nor did I expect my first trip to Congo would yield a story that took up seven years of my mind — and my heart.
Yesterday, I was on the phone with my friend Caroline Orr, who said some things I badly needed to hear.
She said that even if I don’t end up doing my big story, my very presence as a witness is fundamentally important. “It’s about being able to establish a ground truth,” she said. “If we lose people who have a stake in it, that’s when freedom ends.”
She emphasized the importance of people being able to judge material for themselves, and that someone has to gather that ground-truth material.
“If you don’t have a ground truth to compare it to, a tether to reality,” she said, “we’re in the stratosphere of distrust.”
My ego isn’t large enough to think that Ukrainians and other international investigators and reporters aren’t recording fully what’s happening. In fact, this is the most covered war in history. My only hope is that I can make myself, with my specific background and focus on trauma, useful somehow. The very least I will do is publish a running diary here so that I can take you along with me in my travels.
Thanks for reading, and for your support. Please let me know in the comments if there’s anything you specifically want to hear about the Ukraine war — I’ll answer as best I can.
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Your friend Caroline is a very wise woman. Each witness, especially one trained to look for hidden details, will be valuable. I’m so sorry your grant fell through, but glad you are persevering. Even if the story you thought you’d report lfiesnt happen, you will find an important story to tell.
Thanks for this self-disclosure; it heartens all of us. And thanks for asking what we, readers, want to learn. To me this war seems like a forever war. Do Ukrainians? I know what Zelenskyy says he wants: Russian withdrawal, even from Donbas and Crimea. Do citizens believe that's possible? Do they seem in touch with reality? (I don't mean that insultingly. Self-deception is only human, and as far as I can tell, too many of my fellow Americans are victims. Probably me, too.)