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美国国家公共电台 NPR A New Biography Of Marie Colvin, Eyewitness To War

时间:2018-11-16 07:22:22

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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Many journalists claim the title war correspondent. But few have really deserved it as much as Marie Colvin. Colvin was a journalism1 legend, a fearless American reporter who wrote for the British paper The Sunday Times. She was unmistakable in war zones. She sported an eye patch to cover up an eye injured in a grenade attack while she was reporting during the Sri Lankan civil war. And she was always far ahead of the pack. Colvin didn't just cover conflicts. She lived them, writing vivid dispatches from places few Western correspondents would go - Chechnya, East Timor and so many other places and, ultimately, Syria. This is one of her last interviews given to the BBC while she was in the besieged2 town of Homs in 2012.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARIE COLVIN: I watched a little baby die today - absolutely horrific - just a 2-year-old been hit. They stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest. And the doctor just said, I can't do anything. And his little tummy just kept heaving until he died.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Shortly after this interview on February 22, she would be killed along with French photographer Remi Ochlik after the Syrian government shelled the media center where they were staying. Her story is being told in a new book by Lindsey Hilsum, herself an award-winning journalist for the British Channel 4 News and Marie Colvin's friend. It's called "In Extremis: The Life And Death Of War Correspondent Marie Colvin." Lindsey Hilsum, welcome to the program.

LINDSEY HILSUM: It's great to be here, Lulu.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You can hear in that interview in Homs, Marie cared so much about the subject she would report on. We'll get to her death in a moment. But this book is about her life. She grew up in the small town, Oyster3 Bay on Long Island with a middle-class sort of stable family. A lot of the book is based on her own journals, her observations as a teenager than a college student. She was driven and curious and passionate4.

HILSUM: She absolutely was. And one of the joys of writing this book is Marie's diaries. One of the things I enjoyed was - her family were incredibly generous. And I went down into the basement. And there were all these papers. And I found this little white plastic cover child diary, which was locked with one of those tiny keys. And I couldn't find the key. And so I had to slit5 it open. And there it was, Marie's first diary. And when she's 13, she writes very simply, to church - wore a mini - the mother and the father no like. And I thought, oh, I think I can see the woman I knew in that naughty girl. And then when she was at Yale, she did a class with John Hersey, one of most famous American journalists who wrote the great book "Hiroshima." And when she came out of that class, she said to her best friend, that's what I want to do. I want to tell the really big stories by telling them through the stories of the individuals, the victims of war. And that was what she set out to do.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. She was fearless. But she saw humanity everywhere, as you say. But what really made her famous was her unrelenting quest to tell the stories of the people in hard-to-get places who were sort of the victims or going through something terrible. She experienced their lives and didn't keep that detachment that American journalism is so fond of.

HILSUM: That's right. And in that way her journalism was quite controversial. She didn't go in in the way that some journalists of the right or left do and do paint-by-numbers journalism, you know, find the facts that fit their story. She was actually remarkably6 ideological7. But she certainly had a big thing for the underdog, whether the underdog were the children and the women being bombed in the shelter or the conscripts who didn't really know what they were fighting for or people who had rebelled against their governments. So she certainly identified - some would say overidentified with them. And I think that what distinguished8 her writing and her journalism was that she went further. And she stayed longer. And that meant that she got those stories that other people didn't get.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. I knew Marie in the field. The last time I saw her, we were in Tripoli. And we were climbing into a compound owned by one of Gaddafi's sons. And she led the charge. She was inexhaustible. We were actually going to give up and try the next morning. And she was basically like, forget that, except I think it was a more pointed9 expletive.

HILSUM: (Laughter).

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And she wrangled10 someone to bring a ladder. And we were the first group in to see this sort of crazy paranoid world of underground bunkers and lavish11 living. That is the last time I saw her. She was an icon12 of this kind of journalism.

HILSUM: I think that's such a great memory to have of her because that was exactly what she was like. She was like, come on. Let's go for it.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And it came at a cost, though. This part is quite resonant13 to me. You describe the parties and the fun and the friends that she had and how much she was loved. But there was the post-traumatic stress disorder14, the things that come along with covering conflicts, the personal toll15 it takes.

HILSUM: Absolutely. And when she first lost the sight in her eye, you know, this amazing piece which I quote which she wrote - I don't think it was ever published for Vogue16 - about how she now had to wear different clothes. The vision of herself no longer married who she thought she was and who she might now be. And then somebody asked, well, you know, why were you worrying about that? And she - it was like, well, you know, I'm concentrating on the outside because there were some things that were too dark within to look at. And she had nightmares. And particularly after Sri Lanka - you know, a nightmare which would come back again and again - which was, she would wake up just before the moment where she was shot. And those nightmares just wouldn't wouldn't go away. And she drank too much, as many journalists do. And in the end, she crashed.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: At one point in the book, you write, Marie was easy to love and hard to help. Do you think she should have quit?

HILSUM: Look. I should have, should have, should have - how could you say that to Marie? You know, Marie - I think she defined herself by the work that she did. And she believed in the what she did. She was committed to being an eyewitness17 to war and to telling the story of people who go through it. I mean, the book is called "In Extremis" because of something she wrote. She wrote, it has always seemed to me that what I write about is humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable and that it is important to tell people what really happens in wars.

But, of course, she lived her own life in extremis, too. She had a very turbulent personal life. And so I can't really say what she should have done. I've just come to understand something of who she was.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Marie was killed by a brutal18 despotic regime that is still in place. But that regime, with Marie's death, wanted to send a message that sort of shining a light would not be tolerated. I couldn't help but think while I was reading this book about this moment where journalists in this country being called the enemy of the people by the president of the United States. What do you think she would make of this moment for journalists right now?

HILSUM: I think she'd be absolutely horrified19. She grew up in an American culture after the Pentagon Papers and Watergate and so on where journalists were seen as a noble profession and telling true stories of what was going on in the world. And that was the tradition in which she came from.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What do you want people to take away from her life story? I mean, this is a moment where foreign news gets fewer and fewer pages and airtime and where people are looking much more inwards to the conflicts within their own country?

HILSUM: Well, I hope that they will take away the importance of being there and understanding what's going on and reporting these stories and of knowing that even if it's not obvious what should be done that you must never get to a situation where they can turn around and say, oh, we didn't know what was going on. Yes, you knew because we told you. Marie told you. The other thing is that a life which was extraordinary and a woman who was extraordinary. And yes. She was traumatized. And yes. She died in this terrible way. But boy, was she a big character. And I guess, you know, if I want to be sentimental20, America should be proud that it produced a journalist and a woman like Marie Colvin.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Indeed. Lindsey Hilsum is an award-winning journalist herself with Channel 4 News. And her book is "In Extremis." Thank you so much.

HILSUM: It's my pleasure, Lulu.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)


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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 journalism kpZzu8     
n.新闻工作,报业
参考例句:
  • He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师,可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
  • He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。
2 besieged 8e843b35d28f4ceaf67a4da1f3a21399     
包围,围困,围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • Paris was besieged for four months and forced to surrender. 巴黎被围困了四个月后被迫投降。
  • The community besieged the newspaper with letters about its recent editorial. 公众纷纷来信对报社新近发表的社论提出诘问,弄得报社应接不暇。
3 oyster w44z6     
n.牡蛎;沉默寡言的人
参考例句:
  • I enjoy eating oyster; it's really delicious.我喜欢吃牡蛎,它味道真美。
  • I find I fairly like eating when he finally persuades me to taste the oyster.当他最后说服我尝尝牡蛎时,我发现我相当喜欢吃。
4 passionate rLDxd     
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的
参考例句:
  • He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
  • He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。
5 slit tE0yW     
n.狭长的切口;裂缝;vt.切开,撕裂
参考例句:
  • The coat has been slit in two places.这件外衣有两处裂开了。
  • He began to slit open each envelope.他开始裁开每个信封。
6 remarkably EkPzTW     
ad.不同寻常地,相当地
参考例句:
  • I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
  • He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。
7 ideological bq3zi8     
a.意识形态的
参考例句:
  • He always tries to link his study with his ideological problems. 他总是把学习和自己的思想问题联系起来。
  • He helped me enormously with advice on how to do ideological work. 他告诉我怎样做思想工作,对我有很大帮助。
8 distinguished wu9z3v     
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的
参考例句:
  • Elephants are distinguished from other animals by their long noses.大象以其长长的鼻子显示出与其他动物的不同。
  • A banquet was given in honor of the distinguished guests.宴会是为了向贵宾们致敬而举行的。
9 pointed Il8zB4     
adj.尖的,直截了当的
参考例句:
  • He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
  • She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。
10 wrangled 7723eaaa8cfa9eeab16bb74c4102de17     
v.争吵,争论,口角( wrangle的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • They wrangled over what to do next. 他们就接下来该干什么而争吵。 来自辞典例句
  • They wrangled and rowed with other passengers. 他们与其他旅客争辨吵闹。 来自辞典例句
11 lavish h1Uxz     
adj.无节制的;浪费的;vt.慷慨地给予,挥霍
参考例句:
  • He despised people who were lavish with their praises.他看不起那些阿谀奉承的人。
  • The sets and costumes are lavish.布景和服装极尽奢华。
12 icon JbxxB     
n.偶像,崇拜的对象,画像
参考例句:
  • They found an icon in the monastery.他们在修道院中发现了一个圣像。
  • Click on this icon to align or justify text.点击这个图标使文本排齐。
13 resonant TBCzC     
adj.(声音)洪亮的,共鸣的
参考例句:
  • She has a resonant voice.她的嗓子真亮。
  • He responded with a resonant laugh.他报以洪亮的笑声。
14 disorder Et1x4     
n.紊乱,混乱;骚动,骚乱;疾病,失调
参考例句:
  • When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后,他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
  • It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。
15 toll LJpzo     
n.过路(桥)费;损失,伤亡人数;v.敲(钟)
参考例句:
  • The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
  • The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。
16 Vogue 6hMwC     
n.时髦,时尚;adj.流行的
参考例句:
  • Flowery carpets became the vogue.花卉地毯变成了时髦货。
  • Short hair came back into vogue about ten years ago.大约十年前短发又开始流行起来了。
17 eyewitness VlVxj     
n.目击者,见证人
参考例句:
  • The police questioned several eyewitness to the murder.警察询问了谋杀案的几位目击者。
  • He was the only eyewitness of the robbery.他是那起抢劫案的唯一目击者。
18 brutal bSFyb     
adj.残忍的,野蛮的,不讲理的
参考例句:
  • She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
  • They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼,骨子里却是野蛮残忍。
19 horrified 8rUzZU     
a.(表现出)恐惧的
参考例句:
  • The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
  • We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。
20 sentimental dDuzS     
adj.多愁善感的,感伤的
参考例句:
  • She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人,她相信姻缘命中注定。
  • We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

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