Earlier this week I took my Global Media Literacy students to our wonderful local community World Theatre to see the Marie Colvin biopic, A Private War.
The film tells the story of acclaimed war correspondent Marie Colvin (played Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike), who covered wars around the world from the point of view of the ordinary people who are the victims of the violence and disruption. For 26 years, Colvin reported from strife-filled places – the Middle East, Africa, Chechnya, the Balkans, South Asia. She was instantly recognizable by the black eye patch she wore after being hit by a grenade attack in Sri Lanka. The movie is based on Marie Brenner’s profile of Colvin from Vanity Fair.
At a time when journalists are under both verbal and physical attacks, Colvin consistently stood up for the importance of journalism globally. In a 2010 speech, Colvin said, “Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death, and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash.”
As I told the audience at The World before the screening of the film, it is too easy in our current environment to lose sight of the value and dangers of journalists covering wars around the world. Marie Colvin stood up for telling the story of the people who are war’s biggest victims.
You can get a bit of a feel for just who Marie Colvin was by watching her final broadcast on CNN sent out the night before she was killed by artillery fire directed on her location in Syria by President Assad’s military (Note – This video comes with a content warning from YouTube.)
Longtime New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote that Colvin was always recognizable when she showed up on CNN, wearing her signature black eye patch she acquired after losing her left eye from a grenade attack during the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2001. Remnick says it was Colvin who taught him how to be a foreign correspondent when he was covering the West Bank city of Jenin following an Israeli military incursion. The morning after Remnick watched the report by Colvin from Syria, he woke up to the news that the reporter had died from rocket fire.
The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Dana Priest wrote, “Her bravery was legendary. In the 1991 Iraq War, she stayed behind enemy lines. In 1999, when others fled, she remained in East Timor (an island nation in South Asia) to document the 1,000 refugees in a U.N. compound under attack by government-backed militias. . . . Her black eye patch symbolized her fearlessness and commitment to telling the story of civilians who, she reminded her worried friends and readers, ‘endure far more than I ever will.’”
The day after viewing the film, my students’ reactions were varied, but all of them said they were hit hard by the story, saying they weren’t really prepared for how intense Colvin’s story would be.
The theatre management tells me we had 140 people there for the screening Tuesday evening. I’m glad so many people from my local community showed up to see A Private War. It’s a difficult story to watch, but it’s an important one for all Americans to see.
I watched this in a plane and had the same reaction. I wanted to know more and now I am reading a bio of her. I am glad your students —and citizens — saw her story. Ccarol
I open the global media chapter in my media literacy text with Colvin’s story.