“I told him that the conflict here was an internal game
between Palestinian factions, and our guys had nothing
whatsoever to do with it. I implored them to get our journalists back immediately and stop the nonsense.”
Within a week, the men were released. Griffin went on
the air with Greta Van Susteren to recount the complete
story behind the ordeal. It was the kind of dramatic personal tale that strikes an immediate, heartfelt chord with
viewers. And those viewers responded—with hundreds of
e-mails thanking Griffin and her colleagues for both their
bravery and their ability to present the human stakes behind a conflict that remains far removed from the daily lives
of Americans.
In the end, Griffin feels that had she not been a woman,
she wouldn’t have been able to interact with the warlords as
she did. “It seems contrary to what you hear about the Middle East and the perception of women there,” she says. “But
a male colleague could not have spoken that freely. I got
very, very emotional. If a man challenges them, it becomes
a potentially dangerous moment that could turn
violent. But when an Arabian man sees a woman
get that emotional and challenge their integrity, it
brings a feeling of shame upon them. It was a critical
turning point in getting our co-workers released. To
explain to the viewer what happened after that only
helped convey a personal context to the conflict that
goes on in this region all the time.”
newswomen bring the ability
to convey a different personal
perspective and, in many
cases, emotional heft.
NOT ‘JUST THE FACTS’ ANYMORE
Remember the old criteria that a network journalist must
impart the day’s events in a stoic and detached manner?
When fatherly newsmen such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow created American broadcasting as we know
it by telling it like it was and reporting the news free of personal opinion or preference? In most cases—since 1928 when
CBS station manager Kolin Hager became the nation’s first
television broadcaster, reading farm and weather reports
in Schenectady, N. Y.—network journalists were men. But
today, it’s hardly breaking news that women are ubiquitous
in the field, whether reporting from Baghdad, the bush or
local elections. (In fact, women account for nearly the same
number of men reporting local news in this country.)
In today’s new media era, many of us turn to blogs to find
out what’s going on in Iraq before turning to the newspaper.
Opinionated and highly charged panel shows and websites
dominate our TV and computer screens, and our fellow citizens expose their souls and sentiments to the world via You-Tube. It’s an interactive age in which women are well-suited
to report the news with an empathy not traditionally found
in TV news, and Griffin’s story speaks to a transforming,
compelling dynamic that newswomen bring: the ability to
convey a different personal perspective and, in many cases,
emotional heft.
No, this isn’t about the stereotypical template of the
woman newscaster reading a teleprompter with eyes ready
to moisten at will. It’s about living life from a different frame
of reference than the generations of men who dominated
the screen before, and being willing to weave that life experience into the stories they tell.
Such a perspective lent a powerful human element to
much-discussed reports from the Middle East earlier this
Diane Sawyer joined CBS’ premier news program
60 Minutes as a co-editor in September 1984.
