Backstory

Yesterday, continuing my routine of watching news videos on CNN, I ran across two different videos, reporting the "behind-the-scenes" of two different stories in radically different situations. While watching situational reporting, I would often wonder how the reporters live and work in such conditions; in tough environmental, social, or wartime conditions, the life of the storymakers in the context of that story can be more interesting and an integral part of that story itself.

We often take for granted the great coverage of the extreme winter weather that has flooded our TV and computer screens in past months; behind the coverage is a team of reporters, placing themselves in the chaos of a storm so they can both show and tell the story. Here is CNN's Reynolds Wolf showing you the workings of a weatherman and his crew beyond the lens.



So often the drama of the story is lost in the reporting, but here Mary Rogers drops you on the front lines where no telecaster's voice interrupts the reality of the situation, taking you where real photographers venture to capture the footage that normally blinks for mere seconds behind an anchor's report. These reporters live in these battles with the soldiers, and endure the soldier's life between conflict.
2:35 into the video, CNN reporter Atia Abawi and camerawoman Mary Rogers give a glimpse into life as an embedded correspondent in Afghanistan, presented by Michael Holmes on CNN's backstory.


This is not so much a blog post as a minor ephiphany about where all the media that I view so often actually comes from: that outside of newsroom discussions or film sets, this is the only 'where and how' the media content of the real world reaches audiences; that on-set journalism where 'you see for yourself' is all that tethers all of us to the reality of any situation in a media landscape saturated with artificial and abstracted reality.