ABC’s senior foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz has been to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and beyond. But last night she was in Fort Wayne, Indiana giving a guest lecture on her experience covering the world’s hotspots.
Raddatz talked about the most frightening moment in her career: Iran, 2010. The Journal-Gazette reports Raddatz and her crew “were picked up by police in the midst of videotaping officers who were looking for Iranian women whose heads were not properly covered. Officers confiscated the crew’s passports and footage and interrogated the group for several days. In the end, the crew was allowed to leave, but Raddatz had plenty of time during the detention to consider far worse scenarios.
Raddatz said the hardest part of being a foreign correspondent is balancing work and family life. Another challenge, she said, is dealing with the emotional toll of interviewing injured soldiers and others who have suffered during war. While it’s important for journalists to be unbiased, she said they should never lose their empathy. “If we lose that part of our humanity, I don’t think we’re good journalists,” she said.
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