Once upon a time we got our international news through the relentless reporting of foreign correspondent.   The Vietnam war may have brought war into our living rooms for the first time,  but reporters still provided context.  Citizens would come to understand events through the consistency of work from a reporter, though time and experience.

Today, that foreign correspondent, satirized by Evelyn Waugh and celebrated by Hitchcock is an endangered species.  

Today the freelance reporter, dashing about and multitasking media, looking at events on a one off basis, may not have the same contextual understanding.

As a result, we tend to look at distant events without the benefit of context or connection.  The result is that our mistakes and failure appears untethered from each other and this, coupled with our short memories and even shorter attention spans, prevents the foreign correspondent  from providing that first draft of history.

HDS Greenway has been an eyewitness to some of the most profound events of our times, including the fall of Saigon,  ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and the horrors of both gulf wars. Now he shares his remarkable career as a Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir

My conversation with HDS Greenway: