Female War Correspondents
War correspondents are media representatives who accompany the armed forces in the case of an international armed conflict. They would benefit from the prisoner of war status if they were to be captured by enemy forces.
These war correspondents and everyday reporters do have their differences. While they both report on events, regular reporters typically work for specific newspapers or broadcasting networks in a certain area. While correspondents report news from a particular region or country on specific topics. These correspondents are typically put into more dangerous scenarios having the risk of being caught or attacked.
Margaret Bourke-White
“The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.” (Margaret Bourke-White)
Margaret Bourke-White grew up to be a very well-known female war correspondent. She was born in New York City in 1904, Margaret attended Columbia University in 1921 and took a photography course at the Clarence H. White School of Photography from 1921-22. She received her first camera, a secondhand 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ inch ICA Reflex with a cracked lens that she needed for a class. She took her first photographs on glass plates. She ended up graduating in 1927 from Cornell University with a degree in biology, however, she spent most of her time establishing herself as a professional photographer as that seemed to be her true passion.
She opened her first studio in her apartment in Cleveland, Ohio, where she took photographs of architecture and industry. Her work caught the eye of Henry Luce, the publisher of Fortune who then hired her in 1929, and he sent her to the Soviet Union to take pictures. She becomes the first foreign photographer to make pictures of Soviet Industry. In 1934 she photographed the “Dust Bowl” for Fortune which later led to the publication of “You Have Seen Their Faces (1937)”. This documented the human aspects of the Depression and featured text by Erskine Caldwell who was an American Novelist. She was hired as one of the first photographers for Henry Luce's new magazine “Life Magazine”
Over the next several years throughout World war II, she produced several photo essays on the turmoil in Europe and was the only Western photographer to witness the German invasion of Moscow in 1941. She was also the first woman to accompany Air Corps crews on bombing missions in 1942 and she traveled with Patton’s Army through Germany in 1945 as it librated multiple concentration camps. For the new twelve years, she continued to photograph major international events and stories. This included Gandhi’s fight for Indian Independence, the unrest in South Africa, and the Korean War. However, in 1953, she, unfortunately, contracted Parkinson’s disease which lead to her retirement. In 1957 she released her last photo essay for Life, “Megalopolis”.
Kate Webb
Kate Webb is another well-known female war correspondent from the early years of journalism. She was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1943 and soon moved to Australia. Her mother was a feminist activist and her father was a professor of political science at the Australian National University. At only 15 she was charged with the murder of her friend, Victoria Fenner. It was found that Webb had supplied the rifle and bullets to Victoria who had, unfortunately, shoot herself. However, the charges were dropped of the false conviction as Webb stated she thought her friend was joking when we asked for the gun and bullets. If that was traumatic enough for Kate, three years later both of Kate’s parents died in a car crash.
She got a job as a secretary at the Sydney Daily Mirror to pat back damages that were made when she accidentally broke an expensive pane of stained glass she had been commissioned to paint while working as an artist. She later quit her job there and headed for Vietnam, to report on the war with only a typewriter and a few hundred dollars to her name. Webb was hired as a junior reporter for United Press International where she covered Vietnamese politics in Saigon, South Vietnam. She was the first to report back and one of the only correspondents left in the city when the Tet Offensive was launched in 1968. Webb made her way to the scene of the fighting where the ground was full of dead soldiers from both sides.
Webb wrote that “it looked like a butcher's shop in Eden, beautiful; but ghastly” on the horrific scene she saw.
She reported on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where she was almost attacked by a militiaman who tried to drag her up a flight of hotel stairs by her hair. However, she was rescued by a few other reporters in the building before anything escalated. Webb also reported on the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in India, the 1968 revolution in the Philippines, the conflict in East Timor, and the Gulf War. After years of reporting and photography Webb quit reporting once and for all to settle along the Hunter River at age 58.
Dangers of Being a Female War Correspondent
While the amount of female reporters has expanded over time many have experienced the dangers of being a female war correspondent. Women reporters face ‘Bizarre Patronizing’ in the field. Physical assaults are also known to be more likely towards female correspondents. The case of Lara Logan's assault broke the ‘code of silence’ for female reporters. Logan was who was sexually assaulted by a mob of people after she was separated from her team while she was covering the protests in Egypt’s Tahir Square in 2017. There were several women in the mob who were not harmed. Many claimed Lara to be “petite and attractive” as some would say an “easy target”. It is so saddening that female reporters and journalists are now afraid to do their job not knowing what could happen or how people could react. This was really eye-opening for the world of journalism as many are claiming it's becoming less safe for women's reports.
According to a survey on female journalists' harassment… 85% of respondents said they believe journalism is becoming less safe.
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