Andreas fault destroyed records at San Francisco city hall, earth and death records. Here is an opportunity for chinese in the bay area, San Francisco and oakland, to say our birth and death records are no longer existent. Maybe we can come up with some ideas and some plans and some steam to tell the government that we were born in San Francisco. Paper son the entire scheme that allowed chinese living in the United States to say that they were born here in the United States, and that they had children in china and they would like to sponsor those children in china and family in china to come to the United States. So a number of chinese came during the post1906 earthquake period, including my father. This weekend, watch cspan cities tour through oakland. And sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History on cspan3. Tour, workingies with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. Now, several awardwinning war correspondents discuss the dangers of reporting from the middle east. With laura logan, international journalist, Matthew Aiken and a vanity fair contributing author. From the council on Foreign Relations in new york city, this is an hour. Ok, welcome to todays council on Foreign Relations meeting on the dangers of reporting from the middle east. I would also like to welcome the cfl Members Around the nation and around the world who are watching this on the live stream. I also want to mention that this particular meeting is held in cooperation with the livingston awards for young journalists which are a prestigious honor for young journalists under the age of 35. They have three categories, local, national and international reporting. And if you go back and look at the list of winners in the International Category historically it is people like , David Remnick and a lot of others. A whos who of contemporary journalism. The awards are supported by the university of michigan, the knight foundation, and the indian trail foundation. Today fromty here the indian trail foundation. We are lucky to have the winner of the 2015 livingston award in the International Category here with us today. He won for a story called whoever saves a life, a tremendous story about First Responders in aleppo, syria that you did last week. I recommend that you read it. It was in matter. It is a tragic story. These people are on the receiving end of bonds from the assad regime. He does a great job at capturing the humanity of these responders. It is a funny story in some sense. You kind of capture the gallows humor of the people who are living through some of this. He also did an amazing story for stone this year from yemen. I will ask him about that later. Yemen is under blockade. He took a 24 foot speedboat across the street straight from djibouti to sneak into yemen. It is an amazing story. We will talk more about that. He also won the award in 2013 for the 18 killings. A story about war crimes in afghanistan. Survived an ambush south of kabul to interview witnesses. He won a medal of courage for that story. He also won an award for another wartime story from afghanistan. And he is now a shell fellow at the Nation Institute and rights for all kinds of different places rolling stone, the , atlantic, gq. Sebastian younger at the end, the author of the perfect storm which was on the bestseller list for like five years. I think in 1996 you said you were going to afghanistan. You did a profile in 2000 that became a National Geographic documentary. More recently embedded himself on and off for a year in the valley in afghanistan with the 173rd combat team. Embedded along with the hetheringtonst tim who was killed in libya in 2011. He used some of the material from that reporting and for the documentary called restrepo. It won the 2010 grand jury prize at sundance. He has an interest in dangerous jobs for a long time. One of his early jobs was the guy who climbs the trees and cut the branches off the trees. He has been doing this sort of thing for a while. He is also the author of death in belmont. You say you have sworn off reporting. I want to ask you about that. He has interesting things to say about the safety of Foreign Correspondents. Laura logan, you know her. She is the chief Foreign Affairs correspondent at 60 minutes at cbs news. She is originally from south africa. She reported from all over the world, from the middle east, and zimbabwe, reported on ebola. She was the only journalist from an American Network in act at during the invasion in 2003. She spent nearly five years in iraq after that. She took some very dangerous assignments in afghanistan. You are in a vehicle that was antitanktitake test mine in 2005. And then later for in another ambush in a convoy along the afghanistankazakhstan border. That report 18 Dupont Columbia University silver baton. She has also won an overseas press club award and in 2011, covering the egyptian revolution, she was sexually assaulted by a mob and she talked about that on 60 minutes. She has since returned to middle east or zones. In september, you reported from the front lines against isis in iraq near falluja on 60 minutes. So thank you very much. Let me start by asking, what motivates you to do this job . It seems like some people who do it are adrenaline junkies, there are others who are motivated by humanitarian considerations. You said that your goal as a Foreign Correspondent was to be a radical obituary writer. What did you mean . Matthieu aikins that is a reference to a term that she talks about called greve ability in terms of, whose lives matter . She uses the obituary page functions as an instrument in ability are demonstrated. It is filled with the stories of the powerful, the famous and so, i think writing about the death and suffering of the ordinary people who are overwhelmingly the victims of these conflicts is a way of trying to alter the , equation. Kevin peraino you have said that it is a cause worth dying for. As a journalist are there really , causes worth dying for . Matthieu aikins i think any cause worth dying for is at the heart of our idea of reality. Morality. Say a soldier died for their country or a mother died were kids. In some cases, the same can be said about journalism. Kevin peraino what is the trick . You are talking about grief ability and you are covering nonwestern lives. What is the trick to getting readers interested in subjects with names that are hard to pronounce and live far from the u. S. . Readers and editors. Matthieu aikins yeah, i think we have all had the experience where he pitched a foreign story where they say, we need an american character in the story. That is one of the realities of the western media. Which on one level is understandable because western , readers relate to western characters. But the western press is not the local hometown paper. It is the global discourse of power that affects the lives and the Foreign Policy that affects the lives of people all around the world. So i think one of the ways to get people interested in the lives of nonwesterners is to write in characters. , because itof syria gets the interminable length of a thousand words, you get to tell the back story and you can make the characters relatable and funny and make people care about them. That is one way to do it. But it is not easy. It is something that i struggle time, just trying to make my work more representative of the majority of the people who are affected by the stories who are nonwestern. Lara logan i just did a piece on 60 minutes where the main character spoke no english. And then the Iranian Ambassador , he spoke no english. Printou are writing in and writing for a magazine you , cant fake what your character says. Take this sense of what they say and put it in a form that readers can relate to. You do not get to do that on film. It is a difficult thing. I was heavily criticized when i went to liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic and did a story about ebola. How many journalists in the world are willing to do that . Did anyone want to go to liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic . Exactly, so you come back with a story. Maybe 40erviewed libyans when i was there and no one in new york in the Screening Room could understand what they were saying. When you go all the way, one of the things you do, for me, universal stories are universal stories. They rise above borders and culture, about everything. As an african, it was my goal to find the african story that i could bring to the world that ofnscended the african ness them because i knew they would not make it on tv. So we looked for a good story. Honestly, my bosses dont care where the story is. They will commit to the budget but they cant do it on every story. What we did in liberia, we took the stories of those people and we put them in the hands of americans who had gone over not because we wanted to have americans in the story, but because it was a legitimate question in the United States. One of the nurses, she was in haiti in the earthquake, shes been out to nigeria, if there ever was a person who was close to being an angel in a human form, it is that young girl. She went to liberia and did hundreds of blood transfusions in a day to try and track down ebola at the source. So we use people like that, who care so much about the African People suffering through this terrible epidemic that they risk everything. And in their eloquence and their passion and their sincerity, we pay tribute to the people who were living and working and doing that in a way to make americans care. And that is not a perfect system. I am sure sebastian will tell you the same thing. I have sometimes spent four hours with an afghan man just trying to find out exactly when it was that they said that this farmer was killed by the americans who came in the middle of the night. Just to get a date. He would say tuesday, tuesday, this tuesday . Last tuesday . The language issue is a big is a huge thing and television. It is kind of frustrating when you are twisting yourself into knots and speaking to everyone you can possibly find, because that is what good journalists do. Its frustrating that people dont recognize that this is the medium. Television is not print. There are certain constraints you have to work within. It is kind of annoying to be criticized for that. [laughter] lara logan im just saying. Sebastian . Kevin peraino sebastian, can i ask you about how you said you were done with war reporting . I do not know if that is a temporary thing or if i misread it. Sebastian junger i started war reporting in 1993. I started in bosnia and sarajevo. And it was the most incredible career choice i could have ever imagined making. There were times i was very scared, that i was very traumatized, just about everything. War had never affected me personally. Until my friend tim was killed. I knew people who had been killed but nothing that went to the very center of my life. When tim was killed, that is what happened. Eventually, if you cover war long enough, it will cost you something. , butght cost you the life it will cost the lives of other people that you love and it caught up with me and him. At 30yearsold i would have made a different decision. If i had not been married, i would have made a decision. But at age 49 and being married, doing it for a decade and a half, suddenly war reporting, it suddenly seems like a selfish thing to do. Selfish to the people that i care about. I would not have thought that when i was younger, at all. But in my late 40s and 50s, it felt like, to the point where really have to put other peoples welfare first, ahead of your own. At age that meant not going off 49, for a couple of months. My wife and i got the news about tim through a phone call from someone in this room. So i realized, if i continue war reporting so every time the , phone rang in our apartment in new york, my wife would think it was the worst possible news about me. I might come home perfectly safe every time, but she would start paying more of a cost of my work than i was paying. That did not seem noble at all. It seemed selfish. Kevin peraino i think you are the only panelist with children . Lara logan go for the jugular. [laughter] Kevin Peraino my wife and i are both Foreign Correspondents and we have little kids. It is something that you think about. You have a sevenyearold and a sixyearold. A fiveyearold and a sixyearold. Im over when you are talking on 60 minutes, is that what was going through your head was the kids. Im curious about the process that you went to to get back to the front lines, and how you make that decision in the process. Lara logan it is an ongoing struggle. I wrestle with it all the time. I did a story about christians in iraq. Earlier this year my daughter , asked me if she could come with me. Five and she said mommy, can i come. And i said no, im working. But i want to come with you, why cant i come with you . And eventually i said because it is not safe for little kids. There are some bad guys. Its not a nice place for children to go. And she said, then why are you going . So and i said, because everywhere there are bad guys and there are also good guys. And i will be with the good guys. And she said, if you dont come back, that means the bad guys got you. And i said, i am coming back. But i have to say, not just going to war, try looking at your 5yearold when you are sterilizing every piece of clothing you are taking with you in a separate bag, and putting things in waterproof containers to cover ebola and one of the most brutal civil wars in history. Liberians told me over and over that ebola is worse than war because it is a silent killer. These things are very difficult and i have to say, matt was teasing sebastian and i because he was in high school when we were in afghanistan. So he is at that point that sebastian was at 10 years ago when he said, i would have made a different decision at 30. I is a hard thing to do, but feel like it is part of my dna. I feel like i missed the beginning of syria because of egypt. And people looked at me like i was insane if the word syria came out of my mouth. So i felt very constrained and limited by that. I think that there are smart ways to try to do these things carefully. And then you have to be lucky. And when your luck runs out, tim was killed with one of my very Close Friends on the same days in the same attack. And i was just recovering from egypt. I remember pulling my car over in washington, d. C. And i was unable to drive what i heard about chris. That was a crushing blow. But when you come that close to not and iit was was in egypt, i was not being shot at or bombed. I was just being raped by 200 men, those dangers are everywhere. Reporting on the middle east, it is dangerous to go. It is dangerous to be a journalist in turkey today. Two people were taken and the local iraqi people is still held being a journalist is more dangerous than it has ever been. And i have never done it before. Done it for the adrenaline or the thrill. I find it insulting when people say that because leaving your 5yearold at home and not knowing if you will come back so you can go and do something interesting. I believe you have to do it because you are passionate and they dont have everything that we have. Kevin peraino could you walk us through your syria story . The one that you won the livingston for . This was last year in 2014, you went to aleppo. I think people are interested in , how did you get into syria at this point . Isis had been driven out of aleppo. How did you make your way there . How did you report the story . Matthieu aikins the reason i was able to go back is because there was a split between the Syrian Rebels and isis. They actually fought a battle and drove isis out. Isis had come back and they were pushed out again. So they would go back and it is almost an impossible situation working in syria but the way that you do it is to have the right connections with the people on the ground, who are willing to protect you and who understand. And we went in with a rebel group. We stayed there with them, a group of First Responders who were living every day as a mass casualty event in the United States, dozens of people being killed. They pull people out of rubble. Under the constant threat of a double tax strike double attack strike. Usually the regime would come back and hit the same site 15 minutes later as they are trying to hit the responders. So we spent 10 days with them doing that and it was very intense. But they were doing such amazing work, it was something that you felt inspired by them. Which is actually kind of rare in these wars, to find the subjects who are straightforwardly inspirational and not Just Another Group of men with guns involved in a dubious war. These guys have deliberately tried not to take up arms and to try to save lives. There was a lot in them that, you had written about the brotherhood and war crimes. Even though they werent fighting, they were doing it for each other. They are in journal and junkies. ,hey actually joyed a lot of it a lot of them were young guys in their 20s. It was a very interesting psychological situation. Kevin peraino another interesting thing about the story is that you had a window of interaction between the rebel groups in syria. Theres a moment where you are and the First Responders the rebels drove by. You write about how the First Responders halfheartedly waved back. What can you tell us about the intersection of the rebel groups . Matthieu aikins yes, it is like when you hang out with good al qaeda and bad al qaeda is not around. This is a cherry red fire truck donated by the germans. The guys look out and they had gotten the fire truck and were running their own fire service. Totally, utterly confused. The overlap betw