First war correspondent. Reporting on the Eurasian conflict 168 years ago, Briton William Howard Russell aroused the military’s doubts, reluctant to see eyewitnesses.
The philosopher Jürgen Habermas, father of the theory of communicative action, has just written that “the media presence of the events of this conflict (Ukraine) dominates our daily lives as never before”, with overwhelming messages that amplify themselves with the echo they cause on western social media. The ‘blame’ is the endless number of special envoys who, despite all the difficulties, report on the spot.
A mission that, according to the organization Reporters Without Borders, has already claimed the lives of eight journalists since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Last Monday, French cameraman Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, 32, was hit in the neck by shrapnel when the humanitarian evacuation convoy he was accompanying in Lugansk, in the Donbas region, was attacked by Russian artillery.
In addition to the eight informants killed in the 101 days of this war, Reporters Without Borders has documented 50 attacks on journalists and the media, as well as attacks and robberies on an additional 120 communications professionals.
Russian troops have also embedded journalists from their countries in their divisions, who are given the function of “spreading hatred against the enemy” and of whom no known possible victims.
We are therefore witnessing a real war thanks to the new technologies available to reporters today, but the origin of war reporting, curiously enough, lies in the same scenario in the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea 168 years ago. It was then that what was considered the first war correspondent, William Howard Russell, sent by the Times, reported on the conflict between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, and to which the British and French were dragged between 1853 and 1856. countless demonstrations of the advantages of the telegraph, which enabled long-distance communication, had already been carried out. News could be offered almost in real time.
The figure of Russell in his Dostoevsky cap and beard, bundled up in a tabard, white leather gloves and immaculate boots, and his inseparable field notebook, were trusted from the front line. His chronicles, which collected the hardships of the soldiers and the horrors of the battles, also had a shocking effect on the civilians because they were “his” victims and evoked their emotions, as Habermas points out about the current invasion of Ukraine.
The one in Crimea was a brutal war, killing nearly half a million. The journalist also faced British military censorship, which claimed that his information could be used by hostile powers and furthermore demoralized the country when they talked about casualties and defeats. The axiom that the first casualty of war is the truth is as old as war itself.
Russell was at the famous Battle of Balaclava in October 1854, where the Russians were defeated in their attempt to escape Sevastopol. One of the iconic episodes of that battle was the Light Brigade attack by the British cavalry, which has passed into the popular imagination as a heroic act, when in reality it was a disastrous military intervention. The cinema was responsible for feeding that romantic vision of dragon knights, lancers and hussars sent to death by incompetent commanders. Even the heavy metal group Iron Maiden made a song about the famous charge, which also inspired painters and poets.
In another episode of that battle, Russell coined the phrase ‘the thin red line’ to describe the line of defense of a regiment of ‘highlanders’, Scots in uniform with coats in which the color stood out. Russian cavalry. The journalist referred to the cold-bloodedness of the soldiers who formed that line and stopped the attack of their enemies, especially the Cossacks. It has since been used as a metaphor to define imaginary lines that should not be crossed.
In the invasion that is now destroying Ukraine, some of those borders have been crossed with war crimes that must be documented. Journalists also play a role there. Ukrainian reporters have been recognized with a special mention to the Pulitzer Prize “for their courage, endurance and dedication”, an award that should be extended to the rest of the reporters who risk their lives in the area. Eight journalists have already died in Ukraine for being a preferred target, but it should not be forgotten that a dozen have been killed in Mexico alone this year. It is the blood shed by free journalism.
William Howard Russell did not die writing chronicles on the Crimean front, but his courage and critical spirit immortalized him. A bust bearing his figure stands out in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, which pays tribute to the graves of British heroes such as Admiral Nelson or the Duke of Wellington, and commemorates legends such as Lawrence of Arabia. When the German bombs fell on the Anglican temple in the winter of 1940, some of the projectiles reached the crypt where the memory of the correspondent is kept. There is a photo taken on December 29 of that year by Daily Mail photographer Herbert Mason, in which the dome of San Pablo stands out like a beacon among the smoke from the fires caused by the bombings.
In London’s Frontline Club, an institution that honors the memory of journalists who died on the frontline, a portrait of Russell is preserved, along with his inseparable and shiny boots. On his grave in London’s Brompton Cemetery, his companions placed a plaque commemorating that he was the first war correspondent.
Source: La Verdad
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