Role of the fixer

The death of Sultan Munadi has drawn attention to the important role local "fixers" play in helping foreign journalists cover foreign wars.

Munadi, who worked with the New York Times in Afghanistan, was killed in a gun battle on Wednesday as British commandos attempted to rescue him and New York Times correspondent Stephen Farrell from their Taliban captors. Farrell survived.

New Yorker writer George Packer, who reported extensively on the Iraq war, shines some light on the work fixers do and how foreign bureaus rely upon their cultural, historical and linguistic knowledge.

The relationship between fixers and foreign correspondents can be very close. Shared dangers and successes will do that, especially when the work done together, the tie between you, is what puts you at risk. In Iraq and Afghanistan and a growing number of other places, the foreign correspondent would be a target with or without the fixer, but the fixer is a target because he or she is with the foreign correspondent. Both are considered spies, but one is only an infidel, while the other is something worse—an apostate, a traitor. In my experience, this mutually voluntary risk is rarely a source of resentment on the part of fixers. They are generally young, cosmopolitan, quick-witted, stoical, tinged with idealism, implacable foes of their countries’ extremists; and, after all, they understand better than anyone what they have signed up for. For the most part, the risk strengthens the bond. It becomes a cause of tension only when it’s borne by just one side.

New York Times reporter David Rohde knew Munadi and wrote a remembrance of him for the paper here. Rohde was also captured by the Taliban and later escaped along with his fixer:

The death of Mr. Munadi illustrated two grim truths of the war in Afghanistan: vastly more Afghans than foreigners have died battling the Taliban, and foreign journalists are only as good as the Afghan reporters who work with them.

Munadi wrote about some of his own experiences at the Times' War blog:

Being a journalist is not enough; it will not solve the problems of Afghanistan. I want to work for the education of the country, because the majority of people are illiterate. That is the main problem facing many Afghans. I am really committed to come back and work for my country.

Commandos free NYT journalist

Military commandos freed a New York Times reporter held captive for four days by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Stephen Farrell and his interpreter, Sultan Munadi, were captured on Saturday while reporting on a NATO airstrike near Kunduz that killed upwards of 90 people. Munadi was killed during the rescue.

As happened when reporter David Rohde was captured, the New York Times kept quiet about the journalists; abduction.

From the NYT:

“We feared that media attention would raise the temperature and increase the risk to the captives,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times. “We’re overjoyed that Steve is free, but deeply saddened that his freedom came at such a cost. We are doing all we can to learn the details of what happened. Our hearts go out to Sultan’s family.”

Four today

1. The head of Wikipedia agreed to suppress information about the kidnapping of New York Times reporter David Rohde by Taliban mercenaries. NYT

2. In the old days, non-staffers hired on an interim basis to produce news stories were called freelancers. Now we call them "citizen" journalists so that we can pay them even less. Live Citizen is the latest to get into the act. The start-up is advertising for freelancers, er, citizens to produce do-it-yourself newscasts - up to five a week - for the site. Live Citizen will pay a fee per story on rotating three-month contracts. The only requirement is that stories be "relevant and intriguing." Berkeley's J-Jobs

3. The sluggish performance of some online news shortly after news of Michael Jackson's death has some scratching their heads about whether the Internet can handle the traffic when big, breaking stories hit (whether you consider Jackson's death big, breaking news is another debate). A new study says third-party advertising on websites, not internal content, may be to blame. Data Center Knowledge

4. YouTube is teaching people how to be reporters. YouTube Reporters' Center

More on Rohde's great escape

The New York Observer offers new details - and raises new questions - about New York Times reporter David Rohde's escape from his Taliban captors. The harrowing tale includes bribes, sky-high ransom demands, secret negotiations with private contractors, a split between NYT execs and its reporting staff, and a 20-foot rope. Read it here. (via Romenesko)

Reporters escape Taliban kidnappers

David Rohde, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and local reporter Tahir Ludin escaped their Taliban kidnappers Friday after seven months in captivity in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The New York Times and other media outlets had kept the story of the kidnappings under wraps "out of concern for the men's safety."

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Rohde, 41, had traveled to Afghanistan in early November to work on a book about the history of American involvement there when he was invited to interview a Taliban commander in Logar Province outside Kabul. Mr. Rohde, who years before had been taken prisoner while reporting in Bosnia, had instructed The Times’s bureau in Kabul about whom to notify if he did not return. He also indicated that he believed that the interview was important and that he would be all right.

His father, Harvey Rohde, said that while he regretted that his son had made the trip, he understood his motivation, “to get both sides of the story, to have his book honestly portray not just the one side but the other side as well.”

In 1996, while working for the Christian Science Monitor, Rohde was imprisoned and interrogated by Bosnian Serbs after he snuck into Serb territory to find evidence of mass graves in the Bosnian conflict.