Content Warning: This article includes mentions of sexual assault and rape.
Mike Thomson’s profession brings him face to face with grim danger and gruesome violence on a daily basis. Thomson has worked as an international correspondent at the BBC for over 20 years, traveling throughout Africa, as well as Haiti, Myanmar, North Korea, India, Pakistan and West Asia.
Thomson visited MU on Sept. 19 to give a lecture about his career, before moving on to speak at the 32nd Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Thomson said that reporting in foreign countries may mean contending with a lack of internet, a small team of colleagues or even ineffective and corrupt local governments. Thomson speaks some French, Arabic and German but often conducts interviews through a native translator as these languages are not spoken everywhere he works.
“And you probably also will need a fixer too,” Thomson said. “You need somebody who can take you to wherever it is you’re going, who perhaps can give you a bit of local advice on security as well. You’re coordinating with those people apart from those in your team, and this, of course, can mean if I’m doing — which usually is the case now — multi-platforms, TV and radio, everything, you’ve got a reasonably sized crew: three or four people.”
Thomson said the reliability of the transportation can also be a concern.
“So often, when the car turns up, you look at it and it’s all battered and beaten,” he said. “I’m told that far more journalists get killed in car accidents. Far, far more than they do by bombs and bullets.”
BBC has a risk assessment team, which Thomson says is made up of many ex-military personnel, who assess the dangers of foreign assignments.
“You’ve got to think carefully,” Thomson said. “‘What am I going to get from doing this?’, ‘Who am I going to talk to?’, ‘How worthwhile is it to take the risks concerned?’ The primary thing is always always thinking, as the old phrase says, ‘No story is worth a life.’”
Thomson added that journalists have to balance their desire to chase a story — an instinct he likens to a moth drawn to a flame — with their own safety.
“It’s very easy sometimes to get caught up in the chase,” he said. “You seem to be getting close to things, [thinking]: ‘Now this could be great, this could be a scoop,’ without thinking so much of what the dangers are. Or indeed whether they are worth the risk you are taking.”
Thomson said that his first priority in dangerous situations is to protect his team.
“None of us know, until the moment of a particular incident arises, exactly what [to] do,” Thomson said. “I’d never want to lecture anybody on that, but I think it’d be difficult to live with yourself if you didn’t do all you could for a colleague, even if it does endanger yourself. Although again, you don’t want to endanger yourself too much, because then it can be nobody gets back.”
Thomson said he has a relatively limited knowledge of first aid, meant to prevent injured colleagues or interviewees from becoming worse.
“As far as local people go, we’ve all done first aid in a limited way,” he said. “All these hostile environment courses you go through [deal] with with broken limbs, gunshot wounds, burns, all these sorts of things, but obviously it’s fairly surface knowledge … hopefully [enough] to start the process of ensuring someone doesn’t get any worse than they need to.”
Thomson shared a story about a time he was reporting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he helped a woman who was raped by soldiers an hour after interviewing her.
“She was so frightened,” Thomson said. “She was visibly shaking. It was quite horrific.”
Thomson said they drove through a checkpoint to get to a hospital, and he was told to pose as a United Nations worker so he would not be stopped by militia who wanted to steal his equipment.
After spending time in numerous stressful situations, Thomson said it can be difficult to adjust to the lack of adrenaline.
“I find it’s very helpful to have talked with other colleagues before you come back to get some of what you’ve witnessed out of your system,” Thomson said. “PTSD can be something that could set in without you knowing it.”
Thomson said he has experienced mild forms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that passed quickly, and he knows colleagues who have had more severe symptoms. He added that PTSD can also be triggered in those who have witnessed film of incidents, not just in those who experienced the incidents in person.
“I’m really pleased [that] these days, BBC, and I think most other big news organizations, are so much more aware now about PTSD and about, if they see signs of it, dealing with it quickly, so hopefully you can stop it getting too bad,” Thomson said. “Whereas when I started, it was a bit more of a macho world, where, if a man’s a man — and it often was a man rather than a woman at that time — you didn’t complain.”
By nature, Thomson’s job is hectic and unpredictable.
“At one time, I sometimes went from one airport, didn’t even get home and I was off to another airport,” Thomson said. “It’s quite stressful for your personal life as well because your family worries, and then they think … you’re flying back, and then you’re back somewhere else.”
Previously, Thomson said contacting sources was difficult because they were reluctant to spend money to speak with him over the phone. With cell phones and communication platforms like WhatsApp, Thomson said it is easier to make and maintain contact with sources.
“My contact book is at least half overseas,” he said. “And not just people I interview. It’s a pleasure of the job.”
Thomson used to make calls via satellite phone, which he said cost several dollars for every 10 seconds — one time racking up a 250-pound charge on a call to BBC.
“You want to keep in touch with people,” Thomson said. “One … if you get on really well together. And secondly because, if you’re going to come back to the region, to know ‘Are they still on this number?’, ‘What’s happening with their lives?’”
Thomson said he was able to conduct radio interviews with a contact immigrating to Europe from Equatorial Guinea.
Despite the hardships of foreign correspondence, Thomson said the intensity of his work in foreign countries puts smaller issues into perspective.
“When you [have] experienced life at the real sharp end and seen some amazingly good things for people, as well as the bad … it can be quite hard going back to things,” he said. “If you were suddenly asked, ‘Should all taxis in Missouri, instead of being yellow … be green?’ And then there may be a public debate [where] you start thinking, ‘Do we really care?’”
Thomson noted that viewing certain stories as being beneath one’s self can be a “fatal” mistake in journalism, but that certain local issues may seem trivial in the global perspective.
He offered advice for those considering a career in foreign correspondence, stating that risk is not necessarily inherent to the job if one is reporting in an area without extreme conflict.
“You’ve got to enjoy travel,” Thomson said. “You’ve got to enjoy people. I think also if anyone was thinking it’s a glamorous life, to think again on that one … I’ve done this job now for more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent, and I wouldn’t stop it. If you want a life with often extraordinary experiences, provided of course, you come out the right side of them. It’s such a gift.”
Edited by Zoe Homan | zhoman@themaneater.com
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