The stress of war reporting

Catherine Philp writes a great piece in The Times about the personal toll of working as a journalist in Iraq. The feature outlines the dangers and the sheer psychological toll of reporting from a conflict zone that has proved the most deadly in history for journalists. The BBC’s Caroline Hawley tells of the personal toll,

Hawley took the wrenching decision to leave her new post in Jerusalem after being told that she would not recover if she stayed in a conflict zone. I left Delhi to be treated in London, where Hawley came too. After six months off, she returned to work for BBC News 24 in London. For the woman hailed as the BBC’s hottest rising star, it was a tricky transition. “I meet people who recognise me and they say what are you doing now and it’s like, oh, that’s quite a change,” she says. “I think they are trying to politely say that must be a bit of a come-down.”link via Greenslade.