DeepSummary
The episode features an interview with Lori Hinnant, a reporter for the Associated Press, who won the George Polk Award for war reporting for her coverage of the siege of Mariupol in Ukraine. She discusses working with a team of Ukrainian journalists, including Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, and Vasilisa Stepanenko, who were on the ground in Mariupol and were the last international journalists in the city before escaping.
Hinnant talks about the challenges of communicating with her team as the situation deteriorated, relying on brief phone calls whenever they could establish a connection. She also discusses the process of compiling their reporting into a comprehensive story, including analyzing satellite imagery and drone footage to estimate the number of casualties and destroyed buildings.
The interview also touches on the ethical dilemma of using footage from a Ukrainian medic who was later captured by Russian forces, the importance of providing specifics and humanizing the victims, and the difficulties of reporting from a warzone after the last international journalists have left.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The importance of working with local journalists who have a deep understanding of the cultural and linguistic context when reporting from conflict zones.
- The challenges of communicating with teams on the ground and compiling their reporting into a comprehensive story amid the chaos of an active warzone.
- The need to balance ethical considerations, such as protecting sources and avoiding gratuitous violence, with the importance of providing specificity and humanizing the victims.
- The role of journalists in countering disinformation and propaganda by meticulously documenting and verifying information from multiple sources.
- The significance of seeking out unknown or obscured information and finding ways to uncover it when reporting on complex, challenging stories.
- The collaborative nature of reporting from conflict zones, with teams of journalists working together to gather and analyze information from various perspectives.
- The risks faced by sources and journalists operating in active conflict zones, and the need to prioritize safety and protect identities when necessary.
- The importance of providing context and specificity rather than allowing raw footage or statistics to be seen as abstract or detached from the human impact of the conflict.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “For the most part, the people that we quote by name are all no longer in Mariupol. When we talk to people still in the city, I'm trying to think if anybody agreed to have their name used, but I don't think anyone did. Because they don't feel safe.“ by Lori Hinnant
- “And when you find out what happened the day their lives were changed, it really changes it.“ by Lori Hinnant
- “For me, the starting point of any project like this is just to ask about what you don't know, what are all the things that you don't know and that everyone says is unknowable, and then go after those things and find the very best way of figuring out how to know them.“ by Lori Hinnant
Entities
Location
Organization
Event
Person
Product
Episode Information
Longform
Longform
4/25/23