Alan Huffman Quotes

I like to tell people that I have the best job in the media. All I do is hang around with heroes. I do that every week for my 'War Stories' documentary series - and when FOX News wants - I go off and cover the young Americans we send to places like Afghanistan or Iraq.

My life isn't always at risk, even if I'm in a war zone. A lot of these places have areas of calm, so covering war doesn't necessarily mean being shot at all the time.

In modern warfare, journalists are among the first responders, seeking out truth in the turmoil and wreckage, wherever it takes them.

To conflict journalists, a tiny, tight-knit tribe, tragedy is practically an occupational requirement: our work requires us to seek it out, measure it, contextualize it, and chronicle it.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

I would say that the war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay, and greater freedom than the soldier, but at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture.

I don't go to war for the adrenaline rush. I cover wars because that's what I've ended up doing.

Most people, when they meet me, one of the first things they say is, 'Why would you voluntarily subject yourself to war? Why would you go into these places where you know there's a risk of getting killed?'

War coverage should be more than a parade of retired generals and retired government flacks posing as reporters.

The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war.

Journalists dedicate their lives to covering war - they make many personal sacrifices, and it's not something that's gender-based. In a place like Libya where there's heavy fighting, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman.

War is big and there are only so many reporters and only so many places for their words and images to appear. Choices are made constantly.

I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism.

The highest admiration I have for my colleagues is not for someone in a studio in New York but for somebody on the ground in places that they've gone to fight to tell the story.

There has been a reflex throughout the history of modern news: When the country goes to war, so do the major news organizations. They consider it ‘patriotic.’ But it is dubious patriotism that abandons citizens in unnecessary ignorance of critical information…The before-and-after picture of U.S. officialdom presents a stark lesson of the tragedies of war and propaganda repeated in the major media.

Reporters were all part of the war effort. They went along with it, and not only that, they abetted it.…It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies.…They wrote only a part of the war

The Vietnam war was the first television war. You didn’t have to imagine it any more. You could see it.... Television changed the way war was covered forever.

The Newspaper wants me to by neutral with respect to Germany, as if anyone could be neutral in this war.

The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work. They are increasingly seen as not being neutral but rather as combatants by one side or the other.

I had fallen in love with photography and was making a living doing photographic features for publications such as 'Picture Post,' 'Paris Match' and 'Life' magazine. But in 1939, I saw a huge headline, which I think was in the 'Sunday Express.' It said, 'Danzig - Danger Point of Europe.' I packed up my Leica, got on a train, and went.

... war reporting is still essentially the same - someone has to go there and see what is happening. You can't get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people, be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen.

I've covered a couple wars and a lot of breaking news and a lot of cops-and-robbers situations.

We didn't see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?

It's harder and harder for journalists to get out in the field and interview Iraqis. The Web can get these voices out easily and cheaply.

Journalism took me around the world. I worked in London for ten years and reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the first Gulf War.