One Reporter's Take on His Colleagues
Jan. 30, 2006 — -- Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Facing the danger, assessing the risks, hating it, pondering the professional value of the act … inevitably meditating deep inside about why you love life and about the people who make you love it and your responsibilities to them and your world, and then deciding how you will act and stepping into it.
What makes Bob and Doug so fine as a journalist and cameraman?
Psychologists who study personality and intelligence say that if you have a talent, you just have to use it -- it will find a way. And there is also somewhere along the line a personal choice or acceptance that then, if you're lucky, turns it into a profession.
Bob is noted at first, by many, for his movie-idol good looks. But that quickly wears off, and you find what he's really about is his constant quietness when he's working -- what is sometimes called "good stillness." It's always there, composure -- whether enjoying a humorous moment in the hall amid the deadline pressures or sizing up a risky situation amid warriors on patrol. Working alongside him, in conversation or when he's walking into a chaotic situation and asking questions, you get a sense of his composing mind, "his wheels always turning," which is both the burden and brightness of any fine journalist, and a necessary condition for an anchor.
However glamorous or exciting it may look, doing these jobs is constant hard work; there are not enough seconds in 24 hours to get it good enough. Even in the most exotic setting, the journalist's work is the opposite of being on vacation, because even in moments when you may be enjoying the place, you are still observing yourself enjoying it for what that may add to your report. You spend every moment pondering how to transmute the swirling event and the experience of being there into something shapely for the editors and the public and wrestling with the constant uncertainties of exactly how you will get the story out.
Bob's inner quietness is so ingrained in him now he can't help it. His voice, at 44, is already deeply tempered by long thought and experience. It feels just naturally quiet, a quality you want in an anchor you turn to when you hear there's unsettling news. Listen to him on the air, you hear that evenness which is a sign of the constant reflection, the steady and disciplined consciousness, which is the requirement of this craft.
Open mind, unenslaved to conventional ideas and common presumptions -- those mental comforts always dangerous for individuals or societies when they become set amid a constantly changing world. Consider Bob's life so far -- corporate lawyer in New York, goes to teach law in Beijing, speaks Chinese, helps out CBS during the Tiananmen Square uprising, discovers a new vocation, falls in love with its great though often excruciating challenges (the strong man loves the race) and works at it steadily, always with that central quietness, constantly assessing, nine-tenths of his conscious thinking not visible on the surface but working on putting it all together for the next report he'll fashion for the benefit of the great anonymous millions to whom we offer our work.
And another requirement for leader and anchor -- intellectual courage. Only a couple of months in the anchor chair, and already we've noticed him judiciously sharpening his words when after focused study he was convinced that uncomfortable truths needed more attention.
All that, and Bob's plain manifest decency as a person when you're with him -- notably gentle and compassionate in a way that gives you faith that his journalistic assessments will be clear and fair.
Doug? Well, those of us who do mostly words -- correspondents, anchors -- love it when paired with a craftsman who does the nonverbal half of our craft, who can shoot video, whether it be quiet or full of action, that is artistically framed and composed with an uncanny visual compression that makes the pictures talk. Writing to Doug's video is easy because he has done so much of the journalism for you. "His pictures tell you how to write it," we like to say.
It's more than that. Word-person and video-person paired in the field experience the event together. We watch each other take it in -- each other's first editors as we compare our different reactions -- often without even speaking -- to the chaos before us.
Side by side with Doug in a messy story you get a sense of what the old knights in battle meant by "constant companion." He is 110 percent there -- watching out, eager for "battle" -- the nonviolent battle of our calling.
Doug has that constant slight nervousness common in the best news photographers. It is comfortably this side of jumpy, and due not only to the fact that getting the pictures amidst danger sometimes requires moments of more personal exposure than the writer must give, but to the sheer watchfulness of the guy. His eyes, you can tell, are always noticing stuff, seeing things, composing pictures or video sequences. It's just that sometimes, when working, he puts a camera in front of those eyes
Doug's smile is of note. It always greets you -- he can't help it -- and greets the story -- a sign he loves his job and the challenge. That unique smile and slight professional nervousness is extra insurance amid danger -- insurance both that you will be far more likely to get the story (and get it beautifully) and that you will notice danger sooner and thus have a better chance to avoid it. In the field and off, Doug is a person who seems always on high alert -- while at the same time always possessed of that quality so admired in classical chivalry and so critical in strenuous professions, cheerfulness.
Well, something too much of this. They'd make cheerful mocking gagging motions at me if they could read this at the moment. They're preoccupied just now, mending from the latest risk they took for us.
With any luck, they'll never read this -- we'll all be busy out there again on the next story.
