administration michael looks at members of nixon administration who challenged the 37th 37th president. all that and much more on this holiday weekend at book of the. television for serious readers. visit booktv.org for a complete schedule. ... i would like to welcome our guests, media, friends, staff and, of course, lindsey, we are here to discuss her new book which is a biography of the famous u.s. journalist mary.

she's known to many of you, lindsey is british and started life i'm told as aide worker in latin america and africa and then progressed to journalism and i remember coming across her first of all because of reporting in 1994, i think you were one of the few english-language reporters there at the very beginning. so lindsey, had strong career in broadcasting in africa before she moved to channel 4 news where she's the international news editor and covered most of the big stories including conflict in middle east, bureau chief. so the reason is that this book gives you an incredibly detailed

and very, how can i say sympathetic but at the same time not biography of very famous journalist, shows the wonderful achievements of mary but also the cost that she paid in her personal life for the work that she did. we are very lucky to have with us two of mary's childhood and high school friends from -- may grew up in long island in oyster bay, went to school and started career in journalism in this region working for publication and then for upi, for those who don't know what upi it was a wire service that rivaled at and it was a great school.

i worked as correspondent for rival news agency and upi people were very gutsy, she got great schooling before she moved to sunday times at london which at the time had just been acquired i believe by murdoch and was a big deal in the uk. there were several other newspapers that appeared, the observer, sunday telegraph and the paper give splashes to foreign news stories which can't necessarily be said today. mary was a star in the newspaper. a little introduction to the talk. we are at committee to protect journalists and i know ha -- that lindsey has set broader

content that journalists face, mary was exceptional, she went to places where other people pulled out. we will cover this in the conversation, today most journalists would not be allowed by security advisers to do what she did but she did it anyway. so without further due i want to ask lindsey to talk a little bit about the biography and the first thing i wanted to ask you, you know, you start at the point in the book where she is injured, covering a story in sri lanka. we will come back but i think i would like to start with an incident that many people including myself knew her before this happened to her, the cover

here of the book shows her wearing an eye patch, maybe start by telling us how that happened? >> thank you very much. marie was already famous before she lost eyesight. eye patch became part of her brand and it became an emblem of her bravery but also became an emblem of the price that she paid and sometimes the difficult she had in reconciling the brave, bold, famous with eye patch with the more vulnerable marie that she felt inside, so let me read a short passage to

tell you how it happened, lost sight in her eye. nothing prepared for nightmare, as she drifted in her sleep, the fear in indecision never resolving like a horror film stuck on the loop repeating in internty. in the dream she's lying on the ground, seeing the flairs and voices exactly how she heard them in sri lanka. these were her choices. she could stand up and shout, white and female, obviously a foreigner, she can crawl away knowing that they will shoot anything or she can lie still awaiting her fate. the decision will determine whether she lives or die but

nothing will undo what is about to happen. stand up, pull away, lie still, stand, crawl away, land still. she lied paralyzed. in real life it was hard to understand what happened, it had been quite simple, government territory ran into an army control as they crossed front line, marie dropped to the ground as bullets passed but escort back to junkle, -- jungle, alone and petrified. american journalist, she shouted. suddenly her eye and chest were

acute, one of the soldiers fired a grenade at her. blood was trickling from eye and mouth. desperate hope that they will stop shooting, doctor, maybe they will see that she was a foreign civilian and not guerrilla fighter. every time she fell they shouted for her to get up again. in the nightmare time freezes before the shortest fire and her life passes before her. the back of his head blown off by russian rocket. the body of a peasant in suit that she came across under a bush. the young pa-ian woman she --

palestinian woman. images until she was safe in her own bed. i think that gives you some idea of what the extremes marie went through to get the story, that's one of the reasons why the book is called extremist, it's something that she wrote, she wrote that through her work as telling the stories of people who lived in extremist going through the unendurable and important she said to show people what really happens in wars but she lived her own life in extremist too and that's how i came across her. marie was a person who went in further and stayed longer, that bit braver than the rest of us and she was the person who always got the best stories and made the rest of us feel just a

little bit of shame, you know what i mean? >> one of the things that you said to me before we came in here was in reading the book sometimes men in particular war correspondents want to breeze through the first half of the book and want to get to the bang, bang, in the middle. no surprise, i suppose. you do not do that, you give a full picture of her life. i would like to reflect that by talking about the first half of the book with you about the young girl that grew up in catholic family, one of five children on long island and we can get -- you knew her then. what -- how did her upbringing affect her as an adult, what did she take from long island to these places like sri lanka? >> well, a couple of things, one that she was incredibly bored in oyster bay and long island and

she was not going to live that for the rest of her life. she was going to get out and see the world. that was quite early on but she was also -- but she had a stable background and she loved her family, she had a great family. she was the eldest of 25 children -- 5 children. she was rebellious, a game they played as kids, there was a hill in the back of their house, trees on it and the game was that each kid had a branch and they would climb out along it and you won if you were the person who climbed out furthest, right to the flimsy end where it might break and you might fall and you might break, well, you can guess who was the one who always won the game who climbed out furthest and she was a rebel. sometimes she's a rebel with the cause, she was always out protesting, the environment, she

was always trying to do something about the environment and then one of the industries -- entries in her dairy which i love, mass on sunday, rebellion through clothes and writes simply, to church, wore mini, mother and the father don't like. i thought in the rebellious girl i could see something of the brave woman who i got to know many years later. >> absolutely. did either of you have any -- did either of you have memories of her at the time that i would like to share with us? >> well, you talked about her being rebellious at the point and knowing she was boorn -- born in small town suburban and i think many of us -- >> your microphone. >> were bored with long island

and she really knew it. you could tell, when i think back on her, she knew it at that point even if she wasn't possibly verbalizing that to her friends, you know, took me a little bit of a while longer to recognize those qualities that this was not the place i wanted to spend my life or the way but marie was always, she was always independent even though we had a very close-nit circle of friends and we were active, you mentioned vietnam war. i remember going to protests with her, marching down the town streets and everything and she was just always a little bit more clear-sided somehow. escaping high school in the last year and going to brazil was kind of maybe first step in that direction of like getting out of school a little bit early, i don't know if she finished a year early. >> she did finish -- she went to brazil and then she just never bothered to go back to school because she had already done,

you know, the stats and all the rest of it, become a national scholar, i think that one of the things that's really important understanding marie, she's a rebel, she goes out with boyfriend and shoe -- she smokes dope and breaks into people, not you the other boyfriend, tom. bad boyfriend. had fun with marie. that boyfriend said to me that we would do that, she was always reading school books. >> yeah. >> she was always studying, she had this mixture of extreme adventures, rebellious nature, rebellion, but she always studied and that again makes her a great journalist, somebody who doesn't take no for an answer who wants to be out there but

knows her stuff, always reading. >> so apart from interviewing witnesses like you two, can you explain how you got access to intimate thoughts and experiences of marie as a young woman, young girl? >> yeah, so marie kept dairies all of her life from the age of 13 right up to just before she was killed at the age of 56 and she left -- the journalist notebooks as my journalist notebooks would be interviews of people and descriptions of places, some were intimate of personal life and thoughts and feelings, when she does something exceptional like when she did in sri lanka, notes were careful and detailed, lots of description. she knew that other journals weren't doing, she kept a very close record and she left these -- these journalists to --

journals to her last boyfriend, very kindly gave me access. a real moment for me writing this was when i was on long island, i spent 4 months there and i went to her home in oyster bay and her family very kindly let me go to basement and pull out the boxes of papers which they had there and in one of those boxes i found a little white plastic covered child's dairy which had been locked with a little key and i couldn't find the key anywhere so i sliced through it and as i opened it my heart -- no one looked at the dairy since marie locked it maybe at age 14. this was a dairy that had, you know, all the stuff about the rebellion, she was 13 year's old. the rebellion of my father, a lot about everybody was wearing, everybody is wearing shorts to

high school. i'm not sure i want to but i must for honest sake. [laughter] >> and, you know, very deep analysis of who sat next to whom in the bus, which boy looked at which girl. she actually offered god her entire record collection if he would make a boy called jeff like her. it didn't work. you don't remember jeff, she adored him for at least 20 pages. you do remember? she adored him. >> very handsome kid. >> no sign that he even noticed her, you know, that's where it is when you're 13, isn't it? >> i remember marie as being -- >> mic. >> a comment. i remember marie, rebellious but

also had good framework, good family, i don't know catholic but strong idea of right and wrong and that guided her in projects that were on the right of advancing things, protesting against the war, the ecology stuff, it was cutting edge but involved and her dad was instrumental and political family. and so there was always the political kind of framework that she was dealing with as well. very strong idea of right and wrong. >> that's very interesting because on the one hand absolutely her father, you know, was like a star for her but she needed to rebel against him and he was very progressive politically but not at all in terms of the family, the patriot

of the family. he didn't like his little girl doing things and clash, she thought that she would have time to repair the rift with her father because it was quite a bit rift and of course she never did because he died. she wrote in a letter, amongst in dairy, the rest of her life will be spent trying to make her proud of him. in a way he was. >> so if we could move out of oyster bay a little, could you talk a little bit about what you think motivated her to get into journalism and how he got into journalism? >> she went to yale and at yale she studied nonfiction writing. the great world war ii

journalist who wrote fantastic books, very short book, tells the story of 5 people in hiroshima after the bomb is dropped. it's not about strategy, it's not about weaponry, it's not the high politics but it's about these people's lives in the atomic aftermath and marie's best friend katrina remembers coming out and says that is what i want to do, i want to tell the big stories in the human way and she always said that hiroshima was the best book ever written on war and many of us would agree with that and so that was what happened at yale and then but, of course, you can't get straight into what you want to do and she spent time freelancing and got a job and she liked tough guys, you know,

great journalism. you get to go and interview the guys who shoot horses, new york city police, she got job in paris. from paris she managed to get a visa to libya, this was in 1986 on the eve of reagan bombing, when reagan was about to bomb in benghazi and marie got interview with gadhafi. it would well known that he would give interviews to young men. always putting hand on her knee and she interviewed him on several occasions at that particular point. one occasion he put out a little

white dress and green shoes for her. she said i'm not going to wear that. that's too small. you know, it was really good. marie loved clothes. that's another theme. she described what people would wear in great detail. gadhafi was a complete gift with cold cape and lizard skin shoes and, you know, sometimes the suit and the mull military with the crazy medals and all in the copy that she wrote but in her dairy even more, every tinny detail of what she was wearing. this made her famous because she interviewed him and the bombing happened, huge story and suddenly marie was no longer anonymous wire copy writer, she was the brave woman who interviewed what reagan used to call that mad dog of the middle east. she interviewed him on the eve

of the bombing. >> yeah, absolutely. so from with that she leveraged to get job at sunday times. >> sunday times. in sunday times she got to go very soon. that was the most dangerous city in the world. she was very insecure, she was in early 30's, she wasn't sure she was up to this, she was used to being a news agency journalist and suddenly, send it off, a lot in the book about technology the way we used to do things. you have to do something to do something different. something better.

and marie and photographer and it was -- when there was a war within the war, the war of the camps, refugee camp, and marie and tom bribed a militia commander and in one minute they would run in no man's land into the camp, think about it. snipers everywhere and you're not completely sure he's told every sniper not to shoot and you have one minute to get across the rough ground but they did it and landed in the camp and the camp was famous, it was a surgeon, scottish nurse susie who were the only source of information to the outside world.

they had a radio phone. it's like sending sos messages every day. i remember were all glued to what was happening to doctor and susie and a woman went out and was coming back in and she was shot and story about woman whose name and she was a young woman in early 20's and very short bit which is marie's description of this woman who was dying on the operating -- on the operating table. her hair was clotted with blood.

she seemed younger when cleaned. she wore two tinny gold earrings, someone opened her fist and cleaned out hand full of blood dirt of pain. that's a pretty extraordinary decryption. and this incident had a huge impact on marie, 24 hours she spent had a huge effect on marie and this was because her story had an impact. militia, leader of syria, gorbachev, would be treasured and very important newspaper and within 3 days, had been lifted and that was partly because of that story, marie's copy. the image of young woman never left her, reminded her of camp,

earring she noticed similar to a pair she given her sister. she talked about fear in camp and horror among palestinians and proud of her story believing it had made a difference. as sunday newspaper journalist she had time to get in the middle of whatever situation she was reporting on, war photographer, your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough. as a journalist might remain finding relative safety, not marie, she would get up close, she would not write about herself but journalism distinguished by intensity of her personal experience. i think that that story and that young woman was tremendously influential on marie and that was a commitment which she felt about telling the stories of victims of war, that piece of

entitled the war on women. it was not about the politics and the big picture. it was a war on women and her story had an impact. >> to that point, i mean, one of the things that she had to battle a very male world at the time, you would know this from your own experience. >> yeah. >> coming through wire service and through paper. the fact that she was a woman, did she bring something to the reporting because male were into hardware, were into the strategy, were what we call the bang bang of it all and not necessarily the story of one individual person. >> yeah, look, it's hard to know whether, what defines somebody's approach to reporting based on gender or not based on gender. certainly marie, marie was one of the boys, she could drink the boys under the table. that was useful, you know.

the reason she got so many use was because she had the stamina to drink whiskey and smoke cigars night after night and they loved female company. that was about being one to have boys and being a woman, that helped. she was not interested, she wasn't the slightest interested. she believed strongly that reporting is about people, people's lives. now i certainly know male correspondents nowadays who you would agree with marie who would look at marie's ways of doing things. she was very celebrated her reporting in east sea moore, in 1999 there was a referendum on independence, from indonesia the people voted for independence and militia sponsored by the

indonesian government started to run rampage around the island and people fled to un compound and marie was in un compound and became more dangerous and editors pulled their journalists out and marie was left with two dutch journalists and there's a funny story about this because she didn't consult her editor before writing, that was marie, so she calls him afterwards and by the way, i'm staying, the others are pretty much all gone. john, goes, where are the men gone, she said, yeah they've all left, i guess they don't make men like they used to which is such a marie comment, so unfair. i happened to know that there were two journalists who happened to be men who had gone into the hills with the guerrillas just as brave as

staying in the compound. stayed as volunteers, human shields. marie was human shield. it was a brave thing to do and she was very celebrated when she came out. she wrote a piece which was entitled courage has no agenda and she said, look, i couldn't leave because, you know,i had shared these people's food, their rice and i thought it would be abandoning them, i couldn't do it, she didn't feel that her bravery had anything to do with her gender and she didn't really feel her reporting had anything to do with gender either. apart from one other thing, one other story, marie always walked ewal -- stuff and had silk underneath. that was marie and managed to

get back to the hotel towards the end of crisis and abandoned hotel room and had to run to the compound and she found much to her amazement that guerrillas that the looted underwear but not flap jacket which was still there. [laughter] >> one of the things that you mentioned there is the impact that she had and i remember the time of her death. where you-- one of the things ts quoted which is the journalist church in fleet street where she talked about bearing witness. could you elaborate a little bit on what shement -- she meant on bearing witness? >> sure. every year now we have a service to commemorate journalists who lost their lives. that was -- 2010 was the first

year and marie was the first person to give address and memories i have of marie which i will never lose other than congregation and she was there with tight, short black cocktail dress slightly too short for church and eye patch and glasses to read. yeah, she mulled over a lot of the issues, what is bravery and we have to take risks but sometimes taking risks for other people like the local journalists who we work with, what is our responsibility there and also saying that there is -- that the nature of war doesn't change, it's still about victims and people living under bombs and trying to survive and the women and the children. it -- even if people get

interested in drone footage, that's not what it is about. she meant that you have to be there and if you as a journalist are not there, then you are not bearing witness and not really telling the story that eyewitness reporting is where it was at and that was marie's huge strength and that was why marie was killed. >> a couple more questions and we will open it up. you name marie in the latter part of her life but in researching and writing the book with access to materials that you had, are there any different from getting to know her as an individual? >> differently, times in researching the book when i got so angry with her. i got so angry with her. she was a stepmother at one point in her life and she was

not a very responsible stepmother. the story where she left her stepdaughter at a party, that was the point where i just -- i had to go for a walk, you know, how could you do that, marie. there were other points where i couldn't work what was true and what was not. oh, my god, you won't believe what really happened. i suppose the thing that i didn't understand completely -- because i knew her as a friend and i would like to think of us as louis but i didn't know how big a problem alcohol was for her and also i know she suffered

from post traumatic stress disorder but the extent of it i didn't know and i think it comes down to this, people often ask journalists like me who do international affairs, how difficult is it to be out there in these situations in syria, come home, it's an adjustment, for marie i don't think that was a real issue. he loved her life in london. circle of friends, mainly female friends. very much invested in the eye patch and then a moment where she didn't feel like that person. she felt vulnerable and she felt shaky and frightened. losing the sight in her eye meant facing body, it took her a long time to face mind.

>> you mentioned syria, that's a big part of the book, it's a big part of the film that just came out about her, she went back having gone into homes, she went back, why did she go back? >> this was really why i wrote the book. we were discussing being smuggled into syria with the rebels to report the three of us said too dangerous.

this was a difficult journey being part people smuggler, having to crawl through storm drain, sewer, having to crawl like this, bent over, physically i don't think i could have done it. she goes to widow's basement. the only people in this terrorists, she wrote the story about whether women and children were shelters, she went to the clinic which was, you know, hanging coat hangers, you have to leave. they left. she went and she wrote the story. incredible story and i assumed and everybody assumed that that was it. marie in and she was out. the next i heard she was back in.

she was back in? and then i got a message from her, lindsey, back in, not sure it's my wisest move but so making worth it and she said the story can't hold until sunday. i called her and she wanted on cnn and bbc but i told her and the first thing i said, what the heck are you doing, why did you go back? she said, lindsey, it's the worst we've ever seen and i said, okay, what is your exit strategy? she said, that's just it, i don't have one, we are working on it now. about 8 hours later she was killed. she went back in because she was totally committed to that story and i think that felt that she was abandoned the people and the way she refused to abandon the people, she felt guilty that she was abandoning them and you can say that that was -- that is

when you're blurring as a journalist, a line between people you're reporting on and if i say it was a mistake, a mistake, she didn't live the tell the tale, she was killed but that was the point where marie -- that was where marie stepped over the line and paid for it with her life. >> thank you, that's a good point to end this part of the conversation and to invite our guests and my colleagues to ask questions, we do have a microphone so please take the microphone. >> any questions? come on. >> there's a few in the back there. >> so one of the things you mentioned the freedom and challenge of reporting for sunday paper was the drive to get something that is not being reported in the daily news and that's different, how does that compare or how does -- is that

expanded in modern-news environment where it's so fast published and what dangers for all journalists especially freelancers? >> yeah that brings us to what i have been talking about, she wanted to broadcast, she did. that enabled bashar al-assad forces to intercept the signal. and so they knew, they were trying to find the journalists and those broadcasts that marie made to cnn, bbc and for us according to sectors, there's a court case that sister has fought, civil case in country with the help of journalists, it's a committee for justice and accountability, a law firm which does this kind of nonprofit work. they have testimony that said that is what -- that's combined with informers on the ground is

what led to her death. she was targeted. so there's one example of the danger of daily news in that way. i think that, you know, landscape is changing all of the time in journalists and now you have so many short, short things online and there's a bit of appetite for much longer form stuff as well but it's not going to be through the sunday times because it was in marie's days but certainly with the change in the landscape and newspapers not making so much money anymore and advertising and closing down bureau, that means that reporting that marie was doing is now being done with freelancers and do not have necessarily have insurance and don't necessarily have safety equipment and they don't necessarily being paid properly and this is to protect

journalists comes in because cpj is helping freelancers both with helping with risk assessments and helping with training and helping with many things that fre lancers in dangerous places need on the ground and the other point which i think is important to make is increasingly people are reporting their own stories, syrians are reporting syria. we talk about marie's death, there are several other foreign correspondents that have been killed in syria. several correspondents have been killed and more than a 100 syrian journalists, that's very important to remember. >> absolutely. i'm glad you raised that because we are working freelancers and in the very year marie was killed in syria there were 30 other deaths of journalists, mostly syrians. i see other hands with

questions, maria, justin. >> thank you so much, when you were talking about marie's decision to go back, it made my think back to what you said earlier in 1987 when she was in lebanon and she was covering the story of. >> i appreciate it. one of the things that she was most proud of a couple of days left lifting of siege because they were backed by a third at the time and backed by gorbachev. >> yeah. >> do you think in your reporting of this book there's the possibility of a similar outcome that motivated her to go

back and is that something more generally that you think continued to motivate her reporting since then throughout her career? >> marie was very motivated by having an impact and i think that one of the things that you see in the book is how much less of an impact the kind of reporting she was doing had over the duration of her life and this is something which is really significant for all of us as journalists doing this kind of work. the days when a story like that in the sunday times would have an impact or longer, this is for all sorts of reasons, and, you know, the whole international political situation has changed and all of the different, plethora of media so you don't have the same importance being put on things.

i suppose to counter that, though, because i feel like and i feel that it had made no difference in syria, everybody was writing about and bashar al-assad continued with the war exactly as he had always done. but, of course, now we have an example which is the killing of jamal khashoggi. that's been so shocking that this has had an impact that now, i mean, the senate here has suddenly noticed. your country is supporting the saudis in this brutal vicious, cruel war in yemen and it's starting to protest about it. even in britain there are some and that is because of death of jamal khashoggi. so i find that really interesting because i had kind of despaired of having any

impact and now we have the strange irony that the death of a journalist has had an impact. i don't know what you feel about that? >> i feel sad in a way because there's tremendous reporting about what's going on in yemen and it's like water off a duck's back as far as the administration is concerned but one journalist has to be strangled and dismembered brings that. so i find -- i find it very sad. i see we we have a question in e back, maria. >> i'm going to just -- a lot of the work that we have been doing with freelancers in syria, freelancers rather comes with what happened in syria, and hearing you talk about her getting to run across the field and she was in sri lanka thinking about getting up and saying i'm a western freelancer, do you think that she thought that perhaps that was going to be her shield in syria, that she

thought she was sort of -- that it was her super power sort of? >> i don't know is the answer. i don't think -- no, i don't think so. i don't think that marie thought that because she was a foreigner that she would have any protection. we are talking about bombardment, we are talking about artillery strikes. the artillery strikes which were coming in every few seconds at that point so no i don't think she thought that it would be any protection. sure enough, not only was it not a production suggests that it was what made her a target. >> that's funny because that fits in with what we see, the bigger picture is in the 70's and 80's to say you were american journalists a lot of conflict areas was a form of protection.

>> that's right. >> and access as you have said to gadhafi and others and that flipped on its head by syria. >> yeah. >> instead of being a shield, she became a target. >> that's right. >> that's the question now for most journalists. >> that's right. in a sense you know, many different themes in this book and when people ask me what the book is about i say it's about, it's about war, love, sex and death but apart from that, it's about the arc of journalism and what happened in the years and goes from being american journalist, foreign correspondent protection to making you a target and that is the story of marie's life. >> other questions, you had a follow-up? >> it's not really a follow-up but i have another question. >> we will allow you a follow-up unlike in the white house. >> thank you. i wondered how if you can talk more about how she influenced the generation of female reporters?

there's certainly the marie of journalists and i wondered how her work influenced other female journalists? >> she was influential in the sense, when marie start today work for sunday times, she had come from wire services with a form of way of telling story, in america mid-80's. "the new york times" still pretty buttoned up. you would say this reporter saw, a reporter saw. you know, marie, didn't do that. she used to personalize style. it wasn't that she was writing about herself. she never did that. i saw this. and this man told me this. it was an immediate and put herself in the story. this is very common place now. everybody does that now. but they didn't when marie started to do it and the issue of blurring the boundaries and in fact, there was an article

written in 2002 about new kind of journalism sphere headed by marie which is not remaining in refugee camps interviewing refugees but going to refugees were coming from. but certainly, you know, marie had her -- she used to carry around a copy of the face of war which is a collection of martha's articles, i did that too for a while and i like to think that there's a collection of marie's articles as well. i would like to think of young female journalists carrying that in front line. certainly, she was kind oh young

journalists, men and women as well. i came across so many -- in libya, they said, marie, let me share her room, yeah, marie, gave me -- marie gave me some money, oh, yeah, marie, she said would i file for the sunday times. that was my big break. you know, marie, you know, that was what marie did. one of the things that her friends, including myself and bbc, we founded a small project in her memory called the marie journalist network and what we are trying to do is provide support to female journalists in the arab world. arab journalists, there's a lot of obstacles. not getting sent in interesting assignments, family object to go you doing this kind of work, not getting training or safety

equipment. we do mentorship, we do safety training, we do counseling and i like to think that marie would like that project in her fame trying to help this new generation that is coming up particularly in the middle east. >> any other questions? >> thank you. so do you think marie's story is a story of specific time, like we will be seeing different types of stories but type of work correspondent, stories are

fading? >> my generation is actually the most exciting. >> of course. [laughter] >> you know, all looking back on a generation and seeing those people as having, you know, incredible characters where all the young people, so i'm aware of the danger, however, yes, i think that marie, one of the marie is worth writing about is because she represents particular time in journalism. it was time of intervention, american-british intervention in afghanistan and iran. it was a time when there was huge interest in oversees wars, wars which we know little as we say in britain. huge interest in all of that and involvement and now western countries, retreating from the world. there isn't the same amount of interest and therefore the demand for war corresponding the kind that marie did is not as

great as it was and there's a delusion because in the end the reporting did not make a difference. marie can cite particular cases. but other ones, no, sri lanka didn't make a difference. she believed and i believed that even if she doesn't make a difference, ignorance is the worst thing. they should never be able to say we didn't know what was going on. yes, you did what was know what was going on, marie told you what was going on. that to me is significance of it. as everything fragments you have more and more different online outlets and people get blurred between opinion and reporting and, you know, so much doubt caused over what we report. i do think that the era of the great bold, brave, marie colvin

and politicians and poets and all the rest of it, yeah, i'm afraid i think the era is over. >> i would have to respectfully disagree. >> good, i'm happy that you disagree. >> as long as there's going to be conflict, there's someone that says i need to go and be the witness and tell the tale. >> yes. >> it's a bit -- very common place to have the opinion about, you know, in whatever field, the beatles were the best band. whatever. [laughter] >> there's always -- >> yeah. >> always down down the road who carries on the tradition. >> you're right. >> i don't know if this is a fair question but i'm kind of curious if you think that marie was more willing to put herself in harm's way later in life after -- after the sri lanka eye

patch and, you know, i know she wanted to have children, she didn't have children, she didn't have a stable relationship, she had alcoholism problems or whatever, do you think personal issues allowed her to care less about her own personal safety? >> i think that's a really good question and i think that there are many people on the sunday times, some people on sunday times that thinks she should have been taken off the road after she lost the sight in her eye because they feel that she was too vulnerable and arguably she was disabled with only one eye. marie did not want to do that. marie defined herself by the way she did. most of us do the kind of reporting by what we do and many struggles to get the balance and if you don't have a happy home

life it becomes more difficult, you know, to maintain the balance and that would certainly be true of marie. so, yes, arguably she -- arguably her judgment was impaired, obviously she didn't care enough but i certainly don't think that she had a death wish and i certainly don't think that she thought she was going to die because she sent me an e-mail before she went back in asking for the contact for the woman who does visas for iran. she was sitting there thinking about the next trip. so i know that she didn't think i'm going -- i'm dying, i'm going to go, i don't care if i'm going to my death. she did not care about heron -- her own safety. that's self-evident.

it's about extremes in personal lives as well. >> any other questions? kim. go ahead. >> i have a question that falls a little bit on the last one, you know, you alluded to although we haven't gotten into so much detail the high personal cost of the profession to marie and i wonder how much of that inherent in the profession and how much of it was -- was her and what that would mean for your advice to younger female journalists going into the protection? >> yeah, look, the roads of foreign correspondents are

failed marriages, it is very difficult to keep a relationship going and, you know, that's just how it is. i think there's much more understanding now of the dangers of substance abuse whether it's alcoholism or drug taking and so on because, you know, a lot of people -- we all drink in the bar and i have to say a story which is probably -- anyway, look, there was one occasion where marie and i were in front of audience of young people with amnesty in london and young woman got out and asked the question which everybody asks how do you cope with trauma and marie looks at me, lindsey and i go to bars and we drink. ..

i think there is much more and i think that suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder is no longer the stigma it used to have. certainly in my early days, you would not admit it because it was a sign of weakness. particularly as a woman.you think o god, i'm not coping. if i'm not coping they will think i'm just a stupid girl and so that has really changed. now, i think with most they have hotlines and it is understood and you will need time off after a traumatic experience and it is not, you do not have to tell your

manager necessarily, you can have a confidential thing with a psychiatrist or whatever. it's a very different atmosphere around that now. but when we come back to the issue with so many freelancers that don't necessarily have access to those services and their organizations that really, we try to help and that really think is the next hurdle. >> we have time for one more question. yes. >> i have a quick question about your process of writing the book. because marie's legacy rest in the fact that she went further than most. to get the story. and because your book is literature that you know, journalists are most likely to read, how did you, just because

the means by which she gained access to the stories is not necessarily advised for journalists. so how did you manage to make that between the importance of her work and also not necessarily condoning the ways in which she gained access. >> is a very good question. because there is a little bit of all of us, a little bit of me, people keep asking me, are you going to write your own memoir? which now i've written about marie what would you like me to call it? -- [laughter] we all feel that and yet, the book is, i hope, showing the price that she paid for this. and i hope that it will be clear that this is not a thing which you undertake lightly. and yes, she is a heroin but

she was interesting to write about and why she was level i think that also, one of the things that i feel very strongly, marie became because of the drones and tragic nature of her death. and there was a film about her and the documentary called under the wire. there is a book by the photographer that was with her who survived the attack that killed marie. and it is incredible documentary, just extraordinary. again, we are concentrating on her death and i felt very strongly that i wanted to write about her life.i wanted to write about the place that she came from, i wanted to write about how funny she was. how witty, how clever, and i wanted to write about the whole person. and that i hoped that in writing about marie, knowing so

much, i could in some way bring her back to life. >> i think from my point of view actually did that. you answered what was going to be my last question. before the tragedy and all of the conflict in their, what you have done is, you have brought out of her, the funny side and someone who was great company and gave great parties. i mean she was not all ernest. so thank you. congratulations on a wonderful piece of work. thank you for coming. our guests, thank you and thank you which all of our colleague . above all, thank you lindsey hilsum. [applause]

>> you are watching booktv on c-span2. television for serious readers. here's to nice primetime lineup. at 6:30 pm eastern, former law enforcement officer, matthew horace and ron harris discuss police practice and policies. then at 8:00, michael ãon nixon. and then on "after words" at 9 pm stephen moore talks about the economic policies of the trump administration. then we wrap up at 10:00 p.m. with political insiders, donna brazil, yolanda carraway, leah daughtry and minyon moore.

tonight on c-span2 booktv. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. television for serious readers. reminder that this weekends full schedule is available on ourwebsite, booktv.org . booktv attends numerous book fairs and festivals throughout the year. recently, we were at the national press club book fair in washington. we spoke with "the new york times", jonathan weisman about anti-semitism. >> in your view, what does it mean to be jewish in america during the trump era? >> hassan of pittsburgh this weekend.we are in an era of rising intolerance, rising hatred and of course, i do not lay it all at the feet of the president of the united states. but i do think that this is a moment where marginalized groups, not just jews,