Native-born journalist discusses her time in Iraq

CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier has survived a car bomb attack in Baghdad, covered the hunt for Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan, and reported on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence, but she still faces an enormous challenge: keeping increasingly uninterested Americans aware of developments in Iraq and the Middle East.

Fortunately for Dozier, "surviving a car bomb is great training for surviving American journalism."

Dozier's speech in Hodson Hall Wednesday night drew a crowd of locals, faculty and students, bringing a strong finale to the Foreign Affairs Symposium's spring line-up entitled "A Decade of Discussion."

Her speech spanned across a range of topics, from the numerous challenges she faced reporting from Iraq to the importance of unbiased journalism in America today.

Dozier opened by describing how she was critically injured May 29, 2006, Memorial Day, by a car bomb.

"I lost most of my blood and I was told my heart stopped twice," Dozier said.

"But the surgeons said, 'No, no, no, your heart stopped five times. You tried to die for two hours.'"

Dozier was transported to the United States and eventually recovered from her injuries; the same attack that injured Dozier killed two of her crew members, a translator and an American soldier.

Insurgents target members of the press for numerous reasons, according to Dozier. Whereas journalists in Iraq "used to stand next to targets, now we are the targets." However, foreigners are not the only ones being targeted by insurgents.

"Speaking out on television was enough to get you killed. It still is," Dozier said. Even simply cooperating with Americans can endanger Iraqi lives. "Iraqi colleagues have to lie to their neighbors. They have had close calls and death threats," Dozier said.

She recalled one instance when "there were some very brave guys who insisted on working without masks, and a lot of them are dead." Others from her original crew have "gotten out," moving to neighboring countries like Jordan.

"They were targeted because of what they were reporting," she said, adding, "We are targeted because we represent the ideas the opposition wants to defeat."

Already a target for insurgents in Iraq, Dozier became a magnet to U.S. public opinion after her injury attracted a great amount of media coverage.

"I got slammed by the left and right," Dozier said, recalling the biased media attention that criticized her reporting from Iraq and labeled her everything from "left-wing" to a "Doctor Strangelove-like reporter."

"I reported it all, as I saw it, the good and the bad," Dozier said. She added, "I had been taught ... that you don't express your personal views on air." That, however, did not stop bloggers, talk show hosts and the rest of the media from criticizing her, or prevent her boss from scouring her scripts for traces of opinion.

Dozier, along with the rest of the media, continues to face an even greater trade-off capturing the attention of a public whose interest in the Iraq war is lagging.

"Simply put, Iraq became something that made people want to change the channel," Dozier said. She later raised the question, "Do you give people what you think they want, or do you give them what they want to hear?"

To encourage the viewing audience to watch through the important news segments, "means occasionally using Britney, if I need to," she joked, referring to troubled pop star Britney Spears.

Dozier shared numerous other challenges to reporting stories from Iraq with the audience.

"There's no such thing as 'off the record' on the phone in Iraq," Dozier said, explaining that all calls she made were recorded. She also had to be available for the Early Show every morning, which ran at 7 a.m. in the United States, but inconveniently at 3 p.m. in Baghdad.

"We all learned that our translators would lie to please us," Dozier said. She was able to catch some of these lies by picking up on visual cues and snatches of Arabic phrases.

One problem unique to CBS news correspondents, she told the News-Letter after the event, was the "anti-Dan Rather, anti-CBS news bias."

"When Abu Ghraib came out, 60 Minutes and CBS got the most publicity for doing the torture story," Dozier said. "There were whole Web sites, anti-Dan Rather Web sites."

This bias, coupled with the difficulty of traveling in the Green Zone, meant that Dozier as a CBS reporter "got turned down for official interview requests so many times, it was hard to work up the energy to keep trying."

Both during and after the speech, Dozier emphasized the importance of journalistic professionalism. Responding to a question regarding troops remaining in Iraq, Dozier simply stated, "for me to pass judgment on whether or not the troops should withdraw, I'll leave that to the political candidates."

Rather than share her own opinions with the audience, she shared the Iraqi opinions that she had personally observed.

"I've had Iraqis tell me, we're not quite ready yet," Dozier said. Others told her, "You made this mess, clean it up."

Dozier's emphasis on unbiased reporting truly impressed members of the audience.

"I thoroughly enjoyed her," Judy Wright, a local resident whose son fought in Iraq, said after the speech. "She maintained her professionalism and did not talk about her own views. She told us what she heard personally from people who lived there, the good and the bad. That's so often what's missed. What we get is a biased viewpoint, but [Dozier] remained professional."

Freshman Jeremy Stein agreed. "She provided what Iraqis thought about the war," he said. "She was as unbiased as possible during her presentation."

"I thought she delivered a personal and moving speech," said Katie Collins, a sophomore and FAS staff member. "Her message was great. It's hard to get an honest journalistic message and hers was important and well-received."

Dozier does not expect to return to Iraq in the near future, she told the News-Letter, since "CBS is a little leery of sending me into war zones." Her book detailing her experiences there, Breathing the Fire: Reporting, and Surviving the War in Iraq, is due to be released later this month.