Spring Break
Being there key to covering suicide attacks, speaker says
Vimal Patel
Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: News
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If it's human nature to run away from this type of sorrow and destruction, then call Etgar Lefkovits unnatural.
His job is to head straight for it.
"Journalists, like police and rescue officials, are doing the opposite," said Lefkovits, a reporter for the Jerusalem Post in Israel. "We are running toward the carnage."
The Jerusalem correspondent was in the Lory Student Center on Tuesday night where he shared his experiences covering suicide bombings in Israel to a packed crowd of about 80 community members.
The Chicago native touched on Israeli politics, Iran's increasing involvement in Palestinian affairs, and a recent controversy surrounding Jerusalem's Temple Mount. But he zeroed in on the intricacies and delicate nature of covering suicide bombings.
"In my mind, in order to properly cover a bombing, you have to speak to the people wounded in the attack," he said.
The University of Chicago graduate told the group that it's their stories and the details of their lives that make every story unique.
The city is home to the second most number of foreign correspondents in the world, lagging only to Washington, D.C. So when there's a suicide attack in the city, hundreds of reporters are on it. But not all of them always scope out the scene - and that's a reporting flaw, he says.
Office reporting churns out formulaic stories: "X amount of people killed, Y amount wounded…Palestinian reaction, Israeli reaction, (throw in) a few quotes," he said.
"What's lost in this is that human lives have been changed forever."
Tales of human interest and fate - the missed bus that would explode or family members racing through hospital wards desperately scouting out loved ones - may be derided by some as sensational, but those are what make the story real, he said.
He also spoke about the Israeli resolve in dealing with suicide attacks.
Bombs packed with ball bearings, studs and nails rip apart complexes and tear up entire landscapes. But Lefkovits said it was fascinating watching the swiftness of the Israeli clean-up response. Within hours of a bombing, only memorial candles and bouquets of flowers indicate the puncturing of serenity of the explosion.
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