Published in The Huffington Post December 1st, 2008
CNN made two scrupulous decisions before the tragedy in Mumbai. Both illustrating to the nation and the world the capacity of television news to be more than, as Edward R. Murrow put it, “Wires and a Box.” If the other handful of networks owning America’s major conduits of information take notice, perhaps television journalism will not remain an oxymoron and the people’s trust in television journalists can be restored.
CNN proved ready for this tragedy by inherently understanding a bureau in India could become a strategically important move and possible open a window for the rest of us to peek through. No other television news corporation had a bureau and a reporter there.
How did CNN figure that out? With Pakistan to the northwest, generally considered to be one of the most dangerous places on the planet, Afghanistan next to Pakistan and Iran and Iraq next door, it did not take remarkable sagacity, but it did take money, and that’s why there were no other American television network bureaus there. Stockholders these days often consider education excess.
Sectarian and political violence surround India, but until Thanksgiving Day, India was considered relatively safe. Relative being the operative word in that sentence.
The second thing CNN did right came in the form of a scrappy, brilliant, formidable reporter manning the lone bureau in India. Sara Sidner barely flinched when explosions erupted and drunk and angry mobs surrounded her. She lives in India; she knew her stuff. But then, Sara Sidner always had “Game” and a “Send me in coach” attitude.
Sara Sidner sat in the same chair as I for many years. She worked as an anchor on weekends and a reporter on week days. Local news did not fight for her to stay. She had no contract keeping her from walking away-- so she did. She’s a rarity in television news today. She did not cover herself in airbrush makeup and flap her eye lashes or purse her dimples for the cameras. She wanted to be a reporter.
Few local corporate television executives notice Sara Sidner qualities these days, so she did what big fish in small ponds do. They either shrink or swim away and grow.
The pond Sara left was crowded with beauty queens toting beauty pageant sashes as resumes. Objectification to reach a goal is not Sara’s style. Instead she chose the unknown. She chose to walk away from the comforts of home toward potential terror. She has a reporters heart and mind and if she could be cloned, American’s would be better informed and democracy safer. She chose to immerse herself in Indian culture while surrounded by countries with itchy- trigger- fingers, twisted loyalties and sectarian and political killing fields.
Following the massacres in Mumbai one former intelligence member told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, that the “human intelligence networks” have collapsed---that there is complete reliance on “technological intelligence gathering. ” The same former intelligence officer said, “That contributed to the intelligence failure that perhaps could have stopped the “Thanksgiving day bedlam.”
Reporters based in foreign countries once helped fill that “intelligence void.” And anyone who has ever sent an e-mail to a friend, who misinterpreted the message, knows technology cannot replace human nuance. The lump in my throat melted when I saw Sara reporting from Mumbai. I knew her ability to gather information and relate it to others, and I also know America cannot avoid another 9/11 without understanding these conflicts. People love Sara and sense her sincerity, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she did not come up with some answers as to whom the culprits were and the points they were trying to make.
One personal note: When the contradictions of television news got too much for me, Sara Sidner sent flowers to my home and pleaded with me to return to television broadcasting. She indicated current destructive trends would change and reporters would be allowed to become public servants again. With those gestures, she considered my friendship more important than climbing the ladder to the anchor chair that in local and national news turns reporters into actors and creates myopic minds promoting corporate cronyism and corporate agendas. She was not looking for a camera close up, she was looking to be the real thing.
