Clarissa Ward On The Incredible Challenge of Reporting On Gaza

Clarissa Ward has reported from famine-stricken Somalia, flood-ravaged South Sudan, Afghanistan as it slipped back into the grip of the Taliban, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, and from Ukraine, where last year she chronicled Russia’s ongoing invasion while pregnant with her third child. But nothing she has encountered in her two-decade career prepared CNN’s chief international correspondent for the extraordinary challenge of reporting on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Rolling Stone spoke with Ward about her career, how it has changed since she became a mother, the unique challenges of gaining access to Gaza, and the difference it might have made if more international reporters had managed to get there months ago.

In December, you became the only Western reporter to enter Gaza without an Israeli Defense Forces escort. How is this conflict materially different from others you’ve covered
Number one, we can’t get in. International journalists have not been allowed to report independently on the ground in Gaza. While that’s not unheard of, it’s definitely unusual. In most circumstances that I’ve been in the past, you can find a way somehow — embedding with an NGO, sneaking across the border, whatever it might be. We usually find a way to be able to do our jobs: to be on the front lines, and reporting on what we’re seeing. You have [local] journalists on the ground in Gaza who are risking their lives — and many of them are paying with their lives — to tell those stories. But at the same time, this shouldn’t fall to the journalists of Gaza to be the only people covering their story.

We were able to go for one afternoon to visit a UAE-run field hospital, but it never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that we would be having this conversation in July, and I would still be the only international reporting team that has been on the ground. That is pretty remarkable. It’s always hard. But this has actually been almost impossible.

This has been the deadliest conflict for journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, since it began collecting data in 1992. How do you reckon with the volume of casualties?
It is profoundly shocking and horrifying. You can’t help but wonder with this conflict: How different would it have been if dozens of us, from many different countries, were on the ground from Oct. 8, 9, 10, and onwards? How would that have changed the coverage? How would that have changed the world’s reaction? We know what an impact it made on Oct. 7 to have the world’s journalists there — I was one of them reporting on the horrors that we saw. It doesn’t sit well with me that we haven’t been able to do the same type of reporting [in Gaza].

How did you recognize you were constitutionally suited for conflict reporting?
I am pretty good with the emotional stuff. I’m not as good with the courage part of it. Everyone is always like, “Oh, shut up. You’re so brave.” No, genuinely, I get really scared. I have to work hard to discipline my mind because it’s very easy to psych yourself out and get into a state of panic. I don’t love bullets and bombs — not that anyone loves them, but some people thrive [in that environment]. I am much more naturally adept at the other part of the job, which is being able to sit down with pretty much anyone, and listen to them, and find common ground with them, and tease out a story I think will resonate with people.

How do you establish a rapport with people you’re interviewing under challenging conditions?
You’re standing with someone who, if I’m there, is probably in one of the most desperate moments of their life. Be a human being first. Don’t be that person to be like, “Can we start filming you?” It’s not necessarily our fault, but there’s a reason we’ve been called vultures, right? We come in at the dark moments, and we’re competing for scraps, and trying to get our story, and trying to make our deadline. And there’s a lot of grinding that goes on to make that happen.

The first time you and your husband met, he told you he thought all war correspondents are egomaniacs. Has he changed his mind?
To be the spouse, or the family member, or the friend of someone who covers conflict is a very stressful and challenging thing. And you understand that you can never tell that person, if you love them, to stop doing what makes them happy, and what makes them feel fulfilled, and gives them purpose. He understands I’m actually quite cowardly, and also I’m pretty sensible.

Has the perspective you bring to your reporting changed as a result of your becoming a mother?
I feel much more emotionally porous. Now, I’m, like, weeping all the time. It’s become something of a joke, I can’t interview someone without getting all bleary-eyed. In the beginning, I found it embarrassing. Now, I don’t really give a shit because — you don’t want to make it about you, obviously, but — I’m a human being.

Joe Biden has been criticized for the U.S. chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. [The day before the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, August 31, 2021, was the last time Biden had a positive approval rating.] You were there on the ground, what’s your perspective on how the exit was handled?

There’s never a good way to leave a country after 20 years of occupation. Rather than offer my own opinions, I come back to the feelings and opinions of the Afghan people. Let’s talk about these Afghan women who were told for 20 years that they could dream, that they could be educated, that they could do whatever they wanted to do. They could be judges, they could be lawyers, and be politicians, and be businesswomen, be journalists, be on television — and now they can’t even go to school. And now they have to tell their daughters: You’re not allowed to dream anymore. Now, I am not saying for one second, nor is it my job to, that leaving Afghanistan was the wrong decision. What I’m saying is: when you make big decisions, you have to be able to sit with the ramifications of those decisions — sit with the pain, and sit with the chaos, and sit with the confusion, and sit with the death, and also sit with the triumph or the success or what may be perceived by many people as a great policy decision. All of these things exist at the same time.

There’s such a temptation in our society to just pick and choose what bits of information we want to hold on to. A big part of that is dictated by social media: we’re in our silos, the algorithm is telling us over and over again: This is what you like, this is what you want to hear. My job is the opposite of that. You think this is the story? Actually, look at that. You think this is right? Actually, listen to this guy. I hope that, on some level in my reporting, people get a feel for that and are willing to just take five minutes to just… sit with it.