Assignment: Iraq
Mark Martin is an MTSU graduate. Currently, he is employed with WTVF (Channel 5) in Nashville, Tennessee. As part of WTVF's war coverage, Mark and reporter Dana Kaye followed the 101st Airborne in the days and weeks leading up to the attack on Iraq. Despite strong sandstorms, Mark used a mini-DV camera to shoot his video and send it back to the station via the Internet and a satellite phone. The pictures below were taken at Camp Exxon while on assignment with the 101st.
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Mark Martin, an MTSU graduate who now works for WTVF News Channel 5 in Nashville, was embedded with the 101st Airborne during the early part of 2003. Martin and WTVF reporter Dana Kaye were in Iraq for several weeks working closely with soldiers and sending video back to the station. Kaye and Martin found that their experiences in the Middle East challenged their perceptions of journalism and shattered their previously held beliefs about who and what the U.S. military is, "Now I see the Army as [composed of] individuals, not just an entity," Martin said. Martin said there has been nothing in his professional experience that could have prepared him for his experiences as an embedded journalist in a war zone. "Typically," he explained, "journalists have to surmount all kinds of obstacles in pursuit of a story. In general, information gathering can be difficult and frustrating," Martin said. In Iraq, however, he found the opposite to be true. Martin recounted his initial shock at the amount of access he had to people, places and information."Whereas the regular work of a journalist can be described as making do with too little information," Martin described, "the work of a journalist embedded with the military as learning how to handle a flood of information, not all of which can be reported." Another clear difference cited by Martin between working as a journalist in Iraq versus Nashville was risk."The business of shooting compelling video every day carried with it enormous risks that no journalist could ignore," said Martin. He recalled an incident at Camp New Jersey in Kuwait. "The 101st Division was staging a ground assault convoy to go forward when they received an alert of a scud missile attack." Martin laughed as he reflected on how the reality of the juggling act he had performed as a journalist in a war zone was brought home with jarring clarity that night."I sat there with video cameras in one hand and a gas mask in the other," Martin said. "I wanted to get shots of the whole thing, but no one knew for sure if we had come under a gas attack." Another tense memory Martin described was crossing the border between Kuwait and Iraq with the division under the cover of darkness, while the sound of Tomahawk missiles raining down on Baghdad serenaded their procession. |
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