The awards are supported by the university of michigan and the knight foundation. And the indian trail foundation. Were lucky to have the winner award,2015 Livingston Matthew aikins, with us today. Wrote a story called whoever saves a life. A tremendous story that First Responders in syria. I really recommend it. It is a tragic story. These people are on the receiving end of bombs from the regime. Capturinggreat job at the humanity of these First Responders. The gallows humor. He did amazing story for Rolling Stone from yemen. I will ask you about that later. Yemen is under a blockade right now. He took a 24 foot speedboat across the water from djibouti to sneak into yemen to do this story. Awa about pole called war killings in afghanistan. He won the mcgill middle of courage for that. He is now a fellow at the nation institute. He writes for the atlantic, gq and others. Younger, the author of the perfect storm which was on the bestseller list for about five years. A movie with george clooney. 9 11 you talked about going to afghanistan and reporting from there. The became a National Geographic documentary. More recently he embedded himself in the foreign golf valley of afghanistan. From the 100 and 73rd airborne combat brigade. You used some of the material from that reporting for your book and documentary. Sebastian is also interested in dangerous jobs. He was the guy who climbed to the trees and Tree Removal Companies and cut the branches off. He has been doing this sort of thing for a while. He is the author of several books. You said you have sworn off war reporting. I want to ask you about that. He is doing some very interesting things to improve the safety of Foreign Correspondents. Lara logan is the chief Foreign Affairs correspondent at 60 minutes and cbs news. She is originally from south africa. She reported from all over the world. From zimbabwe about ebola. She was the only journalists from an American Network in baghdad during the American Invasion in 2003. Spent nearly five years in iraq after that. Took some very dangerous assignments in afghanistan. Wasare in a vehicle that struck by an antitank mine. In aas in another ambush convoy along the afghanistan pakistan border. She has also won an emmy, and edward r. Murrow award and an overseas press club award. She was sexually assaulted by a mob during the revolution in egypt. She has talked about that on 60 minutes. She has returned to the middle justwar zones and returned in september from the frontlines against isis. For 60 minutes also. Asking what by motivates you to do this job. Some people who do it our. Drenaline junkies some people are motivated by humanitarian considerations. Matthew, you said your goal as a Foreign Correspondent was to be a radical obituary writer. Matthew that is sort of a that ace to a term phosphor uses about breathability. Whose lives matter and whose deaths matter. An instrument by which breathability is publicly distributed. You can look at the obituary i think writing about the deaths and suffering. Of the ordinary people who are overwhelmingly the victims of these conflicts is a way of trying to offer that reality. You said that that is a cause worth dying for. As a journalist are they really causes worth dying for . I think the idea of that is at the heart of our profession. A soldier dies for their country. The same could be said about journalism. What is the trick to get readers interested in subjects with names that are hard to pronounce and that are far from the united states. . Matthew we have all had the experience of pitching a story and being told that we need an american character in this story. That is true of the western media. In one level it is understandable. Western readers relate to western characters. The western press is not the local hometown paper is the global discourse of power that affects the lives of many people. One of the ways to get people interested in the lives of nonwesterners. Because we get to write at interminable length, we get to tell the back stories. Make them funny, make them relatable. I think that is one way to do it. One thing i personally struggle with all the time is trying to make my work more representative of the majority of the people who are the subject of the stories. Lara i just did a piece on 60 minutes where the main character spoke no english. And the rainy ambassador spoke no english. Prints, are writing and you translate whatever your characters say. Journalists put in a form that readers can relate to. You get to do that on the television. It is an extraordinarily difficult thing. I was heavily criticized when i went to liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic and his story. Bout ebola anyone in this room want to go to it liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic . Liberianswed maybe 40 and they speak with a heavily accented creole kind of english. Nobody back in new york in the Screening Room can understand what they were saying. Is of the things that you do that universal stories are universal. Stories that courage, lack of integrity, they rise above everything. They rise above culture. As an african, it was voiced my goal to find the stories that i can bring to the world that transcended the african nature of them. Otherwise they would make them on television. As 60 minutes we look for that story. They will commit to the budget but they cant do it on every story. Liberia was that we took the stories of those people and we put them in the hands of those americans who got over there, not because we have to have americans in the story but because it was a very legitimate question of who as a health , these are not people who needed a break. She has been in haiti for the earthquake. She has just been asked to go to nigeria. If ever there was a person who is close to being an angel in human form it is that young girl who has been in every place of misery. She did hundreds of blood draws in a day. To try to track down ebola at its source. We use people like that who cared so much about the African People suffering through this terrible epidemic. They risked everything. In their eloquence and their passion and their sincerity we pay tribute to the people who were living and working through that. And we could do it in a way that would make americans care. That is not necessarily imperfect system. Spent fourtimes hours with an afghan man just trying to find out what exactly it was that this person was killed by the americans came in the middle of the night. The language issue is a huge thing. It is kind of frustrating when you are twisting yourself into it is frustrating that people dont recognize it. There are constraints that you have to work with. It is kind of annoying. To be criticized for that. Just saying. [laughter] youebastian, can i ask about what you said about being done with more reporting. Started a war reporting in 1993 in sarajevo in bosnia. It was the most incredible career choice that i couldve made. There were times i was very scared and i was very war had never cost anything personally. It was nothing that went to the very center of my life. Killed that is what happened. It might cost you your life. It finally caught up with me with tim. Had i not been married i mightve made a different decision. Married, having done it for a decade and a half, suddenly war reporting instead for the first time in my life it seemed like a selfish thing to do. And i would not have thought that when i was younger. 50s i saw40s and that you have to put other peoples welfare first ahead of euro. That meant not going off for a couple of months. Got the news about tim through phone call. I realize that if i continued war reporting every time the phone rang in her apartment in would think ite was the worst possible news about me. And im i come home privately every time but stephen she would start paying more of a price for my job. I think laura is the only panelist with children. Lara you are going for the jugular. And wifi were Foreign Correspondents and we have little kids. About thise talking on 60 minutes your idea was how can i done this to my kids. What was the process that you went to get back to the front lines. How you made the decision and the process. Lara i wrestle with it all the time. I did a story about christians in iraq. My daughter asked me if she can come with me. She is five. I had to say no you cannot come with me. It is not safe for little kids. There are some bad guys there. And she said why are you going. Said everywhere there are bad guys but there are also good guys. And im going to be with the good guys. She said if you dont come back that means the bad guys got you. I said im coming back. Not just going to war. Try looking at your five and sixyearold when you are sterilizing every piece of clothing that you have. To go and report on ebola. Had one of the most brutal civil war is in history. And they told me over and over that ebola is worse than war. I think that was teasing sebastian tonight. He is at that point that sebastian was at years ago. I feel like it is part of my dna. Of syriathe beginning because of egypt. I felt very constrained and limited by that. There are smart ways to try to do these things carefully. And then you have to be lucky. When you look runs out. Tim was killed with one of my very close friends. The same day, the same attack. I was just recovering from egypt. Ira poli my car over and being unable to drive when i heard about this. That was a crushing blow. We become that close and it was in egypt i was being shot at or bombs. I was just being raised by 200 men. Those dangers are everywhere. , itrting on the middle east to go to turkey today. Fox news had two people taken. The local iraqi person is still held. Being a journalist today is probably more dangerous than it has ever been. It for ther done adrenaline of the thrills and i find it insulting when people say that because you dont leave to doive and sixyearold something interesting. You believe passionately that someone has to do it. Without some form of accountability you dont have everything that we have. Matthew, could you walk us through our serious story your syria story . How did you get into syria . Isis have been driven out of that point. Had a you make your way there . Wa i had been in the year before. They were pushed out again. Back and it iso almost an impossible situation getting into syria. You have to have the right kind of connections with people on the ground who are going to protect you and whose motivations you can understand as far as you can. Groupt in with a rebel and we stood there as far as we could. Responders whot were literally living every day the kind of mass casualty event that you rarely see in the united states. Pulling people out of the rubble. They came back and hit the same site 15 minutes later because they were trying to hit the responders. It was very intense. They were doing such amazing work. It rubbed off on you. You felt very inspired by them. It is rare in these wars increasingly to find subjects that are so straightforwardly inspirational. These guys had to have really chosen not to take up arms. And to save lives. There was a lot that resonated with what sebastian has written about. They were deathly doing it for each other. They did not want to be sitting in a refugee camp in turkey wasting the lives. The psychological situation was very interesting. You had a little bit of a window into the rebel groups. Some guys driveby and they wave of the First Responders halfheartedly waved back. About theou tell us intersection of the rebel groups . Matthew this was a cherry red fire truck that had been donated by the germans. Looked out with huge black beards. They had gotten the fire truck and were running their own service. It was just totally utterly confused the overlap between the groups. Seemdentities that may very clear here. The extremists in the moderates. It was actually utterly confused on the ground. You wrote an oped for the new york times. They will have to be less squeamish about picking allies in syria. Are there any left. . Matthew it is the same groups. I dont think they are substantially different in their ideology. Sebastian, i wanted to ask about the process of returning home after this kind of reporting. Ownwrote about your shortterm posttraumatic stress disorder. Could you share your personal experience . Sebastian the first time i was a little deranged by trauma was in 2000. I had been in northern afghanistan. Had an point the taliban air force and tanks and artillery. We really got pounded. This was before 9 11. At war. Try was not war know the youly could be traumatized in any kind of enduring way. I am not a particularly neurotic person. I was really puzzled when i started having panic attacks in situations that ordinarily would not scare me. Like the new york city subway at rush hour. Or ski gondola. All of a sudden i was having panic attacks. I didnt understand it. If i jump to the loud noise may be a couldve understood it. I was panicking in small crowded places. Everything i was looking at seemed like a threat. The crowd of people was somehow going to turn and attack me. The trains were going to jump the rails and come up on the platform and kill everybody. I reacted as if this was true. I couldnt take the subway for a while. I had no idea anything to do with my experiences in combat. I just i was going crazy. At age 38 is finally happening. [laughter] later i was talking neck and she the was a psychologist and she asked if id ever had any emotional consequences from covering war. I said no, i dont think so. But it is kind of strange, i keep having these weird panic attacks. While that is called posttraumatic stress disorder. She said you will be hearing a lot more about that. I wrote an article for vanity fair about this. Basically there is to sorts. A shortterm reaction to trauma. Humans are primates, we evolved to deal with things that threaten our lives. The logic of darwinian selection. We react to danger in ways that are adapted and help us survive. Danger that threat a day or ats week or a month. It is calculated to get you through the typical dangerous time. Longtermt adapted is ptsd. You are maladapted to your life. That is pretty rare. 20 of people wind up with ptsd. Erm i wrote an article about why that rate is so high in the military. In the united states, as opposed to the israeli or other militaries. The navajo were very warlike people. When europeans showed up in north america. Idea that thes apache probably werent getting this disorder when they were fighting the cavalry. Longterm ptsd if you come home to a fragmented, alienated modern society like ours, where it has much higher suis a suicide rates than in the third world. Is a function of the society you come home to. That was my whole thesis, and i turned into a book that is coming out in may. I have a million questions, its a really interesting topic. But i think i better open it up to questions from the members here. Remind people that this meeting is on the record, and if you could raise your hand, someone will bring you a microphone. Speak directly into the microphone, stand up, say your name and affiliation, and please limit yourself to one question. Hello, im charles. I have a question for each of you and all of you together. How has social media changed the reporting of war . The last time i was in a war 2008, and there was really none no internet. Prehistory. A very remote outpost. It did not really affect the soldiers i was with. We run denies recently. We were on mars, basically. A perfect this is example of how it has changed coverage of war. There is a group of young people qqa, andk that ra their name is also their purpose. We cannot go there because it is under state control. Only one journalist managed to get permission from the islamic , and anotherhere journalists who grew up with a an of those guys, and did incredible series. I think social media has become the lifeblood of many much of the work coverage. It is very hard to know what you can rely on and what you cant, and that is why organizations like these are so important. Like any journalist, over time you get to know their work and trust them. They were to a certain standard. On social lot of prep media. Mainstreamves to say media is corrupt and we dont do anything right, but social medias wonderful because they are not paid by anyone. You have to filter all of that out and just be honest about what you are dealing with. At the core of the Mainstream Media and social media, those two things come together to sustain the first amendment. Without social media today, we would not be in a good place. And also speaking from a very personal experience, i think it has probably increased the amount of the coverage of war as well. I do waste a lot of time on twitter. [laughter] youre not on twitter. I noticed you were not. Say there are very few young freelancers who are able to ignore social media, and become such an essential tool in selfpromotion online. That is the less effective attractive side of it. But i the other side, to have great people who are able to form a network and can take cameras over the city and get information, it becomes something where people go to them. The syrian war probably is a great example. Croatiant program of weapon supplies to the syrian weapons rebels was uncovered through social media. A blogger noticed croatian weapons were showing up in the hands of the rebels, and it turns out is a saudi funded syrian opposition. Tom from new york university. Confronted you been with a situation in which you felt you wanted to become, or needed to become a participant, rather than an observer . Or in addition to an observer . And how has your journalistic training help you in addressing a dilemma like that . I have never picked up a weapon shooting, i would always shoot myself in put first. I think your journalistic training is everything. In the process of being fair and putting yourself in everyones shoes, trying to understand it, is essentially what protects your journalism. If you say, i dont agree with this person so i am not putting their view into the story, you are not advancing the conversation in any way, shape, or form. It begins with understanding. Trying to do understand everyones position, i think i learned that in south africa growing up. Andew up under apartheid, we were part of something that we believed was very noble and just, which was the fight for human rights and equality for everyone. We grew up despising the right wing. And then i worked for a news agency, and i realized that every time an event happened, as an agency person, had to provide everyones perspective. That was our job, we would offer the information and people would use it. In the course of that process, it taught me how to be open to everything. It doesnt mean i have to agree with it. Ive been running a campaign for 15 y