daniel prazer

Back when I was an undergrad journalism major, I worked with an amazing professor, journalist, and friend to this day, Cheryl Heckler. My senior year, we tried like hell to work out an independent study where we’d both go to Kosovo to get a taste of journalism during wartime. A friend who worked at Buzz Coffee, and who served in the Army in Kosovo, gave me this advice: “Don’t step off the pavement. There could be land mines, especially in the Russian sector.” I went to a shooting range and rented a Glock, wanting to be prepared for the worst.

Unfortunately — or fortunately — it didn’t work out. We weren’t able to get visas, and the airfare would have been prohibitively expensive. When I met my wife Ann, I couldn’t fathom taking the kind of risks that conflict reporters and photographers routinely take. I’ve always morbidly joked that if she ever left me or — God forbid — something tragic happens to her, I’d join the French Foreign Legion. I think, now, that I’d rather be a conflict reporter.

If you haven’t seen Restrepo, you owe it to yourself (and I’d argue your country) to see it. It streams on Netflix and is widely available. The trailer is below, but be warned that it contains some not-safe-for-work, soldierly language.

The co-director of Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, died today in Misrata, Libya, and three other photographers were injured, one gravely.

When I talked to Cheryl today, I asked her why Hetherington’s death was affecting me as much as it is. She said, in her typical cut-to-the-point way, “Because their stories are so real, and because you know, if not for Ann, it could be you in that casket.”

There are a lot of heroes in this world. I’m honored to know a few — firefighters, police officers (one killed in the line of duty), people who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, people who did and do amazing things without thinking about it. I know the former company commander of the unit shown in Restrepo.

But what conflict reporters do on a daily basis is a wholly good thing. They put their lives on the line so that we, far, far away from the fighting, have an impartial picture of war. And maybe that’s why I feel the same way about Tim Hetherington that I feel about that police officer killed in the line of duty, the firefighters who don’t make it out of burning buildings, the soldiers who come home with injuries visible and injuries to their psyche. Tim Hetherington represented the best of all journalists, and that’s why anyone who’s ever written under a byline is mourning him today.