Peace cannot come without a solution, Terry McCarthy said.
Former foreign war correspondent and four-time Emmy award winner Terry McCarthy spoke to Pepperdine students Jan. 19, about lessons he learned while reporting on international conflicts. There is a real necessity for education to understand conflicts presently and historically, McCarthy said.
“If we don’t know how this ends, what are we doing or working toward?” McCarthy said.
Politically-interested students filled the Surfboard Room in Payson Library waiting to hear from McCarthy.
McCarthy is the CEO of the American Society of Cinematographers, and in 2018, he was the President of the American Academy in Berlin. He spent 27 years working as a foreign correspondent for news agencies including TIME Magazine, ABC News and CBS News. He has traveled extensively, covering conflicts in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, Dean of Libraries Mark Roosa, said.
“War isn’t pretty,” McCarthy said.
He shared his experiences of reporting on conflicts in Central America in the 80s and compared them to reporting in the Middle East post-9/11. He said he would drive through the mountains in Central America to Nicaragua and El Salvador to conduct interviews, having relatively easy access to interviewees. However, following 9/11, members of groups such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS had “no interest in giving interviews with Western journalists,” McCarthy said.
Western journalists were seen as the enemy, McCarthy said. McCarthy and fellow journalists were unable to get the perspectives of members of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or ISIS. It became very difficult to report on the conflict, McCarthy said.
“I have no idea why Taliban fighters would throw acid in the faces of young girls that want to go to school,” McCarthy said.
He said he never had the chance to ask.
Reporters looking to communicate with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS following 9/11 found it impossible, McCarthy said.
“You have to be conscious that you aren’t getting the full story,” McCarthy said.
With this comes the personal responsibility to be educated on past conflicts and current conflicts between nations, he said.
During the war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of people died because it was a war we didn’t understand, McCarthy said.
“The reality was, we had failed to understand structures around society,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy finished by encouraging education of international politics while also calling for solutions to war, communication and plans for working toward an end goal in international relations.
For peace to take its place, a plan needs to be put in place, McCarthy said.
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