Selling Upon Trust

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<img src="images/bbc.jpg" alt="BBC London" /><<audio "typing" play volume 0.5>><<audio "photocopier" play volume 0.5>><<audio "laserjet" play volume 0.5>> Your name is ''Alistair Cornwall'', and you are the latest living legend in British reporting. At a mere 45 years old, you’ve secured for yourself the position of lead anchor for BBC London, and a reputation for stringent fact-checking, incredibly high standards, and natural storytelling ability, all of which helped your career to soar. This in addition to your fearlessness in the field, proven by your investigative work in The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria. And you are <abbr title="Damn straight, you are.">[[fearless]]</abbr>.

<img src="images/bbc-studio.jpg" alt= "Inside the BBC World News newsroom" /> <<audio "news-intro" play>>Tonight’s interviewer, Callum Sterling, is a household name like yourself. Almost 10 years ago he interviewed you about your experience as a hostage. Tonight he will be asking you about your time in Makeni, Sierra Leone, where you traveled for the Ebola story. You wound down from Monrovia, Liberia, looked at the exteriors of hospitals whose doorways were plugged with bodies. Bodies left to rot in the streets. Hemorrhagic fever made even the freshest corpses slick. <img src="images/ebola-corpse.jpg" alt="The body of an Ebola victim" /> You ran into Giles over such corpses, both of you watching white-suited man wrapping up bodies while family members keened at a safe distance. “It’s hellish that hell makes for such good stories,” Giles said after it became clear you had <abbr title="God, you wanted to punch him in the mouth.">nothing to say, and it’s true</abbr>. “Rolling in 5." You sit kitty-corner to Callum behind the desk, both of you assuming the perfected business-casual posture of a polished anchor. “It’s a tough story to sell,” Callum says. “Polls say most people think of it as an African disease, like it should stay with the blacks. There’s more sympathy for the white Americans who go home contagious and cured than all the black bodies piling up. You know what they’re saying, that because you’re black some viewers might think you’ve got an agenda, or worse, you came back with it. They thought Giles might be a better fit, but I’m glad they went with you. The man’s too young to know how to tell a story.” “Not to worry,” you say. “I’ve got [[the facts]]. And I’ve always got [[the angle]], don’t I?” You make sure to ooze confidence to disguise your horror. They were going to give the story to [[that prick Giles]]?

<img src="images/bbc-studio.jpg" alt="Inside the newsrooms of BBC World News"> You’ve gone from war-chaser to story-teller, ensuring that the facts you provide are framed within the narrative conventions of journalism, the ones BBC promotes as <abbr title="Reference: SPJ Code of Ethics">empathetic, sympathetic, compelling to your public</abbr>. There’s the additional barrier that no one mentions, that it is a white public, and you are a black man. You wanted to cover the West African region, but you’ve wondered many a time if there were other reasons they placed you there. You only left London recently, to see the Ebola outbreak for yourself. Senior editor Charlie hemmed and hawed before he allowed you to go, saying, “Doesn’t make a difference, does it? We’ve already got Giles down there.” You couldn’t say: But I can do it better.<<timed 15s>><<replace "#better">>even though I'm black<</replace>><</timed>> Giles Hall replaced you as BBC’s West Africa correspondent. He’s a young, bright-eyed, ambitious bloodhound like yourself. White, blue-eyed, blond, he’s the very picture of a good-old Briton-born boy. Forty-five isn’t old but he made you feel your age acutely when you met, when he laughed off being 31 and a rising star, when he shook your hand with both of his and said, <abbr title="which really means, I'm after your job, and I will have it someday.">“I idolize you, Ali. You’re the man I aspire to be.”</abbr> Your colleagues say you’re being daft, you’re secure for life, but what do they know? They covet your position too. And there’s always that subtext, you’re black, how much can the public really identify with you? It keeps you up at night, this fear, that Giles is being groomed to replace you. [[Tonight's interview|interview]].

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<<audio "war" play volume 0 fadein>>You were shot in the arm while interviewing child soldiers in Sierra Leone, post-conflict, a period that lent itself to empowerment through violence. Too shocked to scream, you screamed anyway when you hit the ground because the bored boyish faces above you demanded it. You kept talking, through the searing pain, and, impressed or amused, the boys kept talking with you. In The Gambia, you were taken hostage in a dirty white van. You were struck on the head but you vaguely remember a swollen-faced woman you didn’t know, a bespectacled man you recognized as a local reporter, and two twenty-something men likely assumed to be coup plotters. When you were shoved out of the van, you were blindfolded, but you heard the shots of an extrajudicial execution, you smelled the petrol being poured and lit and heard the dull slapping of flesh as the woman was denounced as a lesbian and raped by turns, as though this would cure her. Your heart was pounding. They’d confiscated your notes but you’d known better than to oppose Jammeh in writing on his own turf. Your credentials prove you are a British national with all the proper clearances. They ask you about the story you will write and you think fast, say you are only doing background research for a piece foregrounding the deaths of Gambian immigrants, who died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. <abbr title="Bold-faced lies that saved your life.">You say, "I’m hoping the piece will pressure the ICC into investigating these deaths, as President Jammeh wishes."</abbr> They blindfold you again. Drive you. You hit the ground face-first. Then the first blow comes, the solid weight of a metal pipe smashing the tissues of your upper back. A gun grinds into the back of your neck. Your curly hair is pulled back by a fist and a steel-toed boot kicks you in the face. You’re choking on blood and fragments of teeth. They’re laughing. They let you go. <img src="images/gambia-secret-army.jpg" alt="Jammeh's secret army" align="middle" /> You still think it would have gone differently if you weren’t black. When you returned to London, with new shiny caps on your front teeth and stitches railroading your face and back, you told the esteemed Callum Sterling of //The Nightly News// the story as it was meant to be told. The executions. The LGBTQ discrimination. The repression of free speech. The atmosphere of fear. You tell it the way you experienced it, the way it should reach the public, and the public responds. You’re a familiar face, now swollen from torture, your voice thick and emotional when you talk about the women whose rapes you heard, and the necklacing of the coup plotters. You denounce Jammeh’s human rights violations, knowing you may one day go back, and Callum leans back in his chair and says, "Yours is a stupid courage, Ali, but maybe it’s one more of us ought to have." That was over a decade ago. Now you are anchor for BBC London, and your old post belongs to that parasite up-and-comer Giles Hall. Tonight, Callum will [[interview]] you about your time in Makeni, Sierra Leone, where you traveled for the Ebola story with [[that prick Giles]] in tow.

<img src="images/static.gif" alt="White noise" /> "Cameras rolling. You’re now live." CALLUM: "And with us tonight, we have Ali Cornwall, anchor and former West Africa correspondent for BBC London. So, you were recently in Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola epidemic, is that correct?" YOU: "Yes, that’s correct. I visited the main hospital in Makeni where conditions were terrible and supplies were exhausted. The nurses lacked gloves and protective garments. There were hardly enough receptacles for infectious waste. Patients were dying in a most undignified manner. The place and people were regularly sprayed with chlorine, but the bodies were often left on the floor to rot and the people remained uneducated about how the disease is transmitted. There’s much more we could do to spread awareness and aid to this region, Callum, and the current conditions there only serve to drive my point home." Those are the bare facts. Callum is looking at you expectantly. He’s looking for a narrative frame but all you have are statistics. You list them. An infographic is shown, charting the loss of life and disease vectors through the West African region. CALLUM: <<timed 15s>>Well, good to have you, as always, Ali. Thanks for coming.<</timed>> He’s flicking his papers with a finger. A decisive tic. He’s wishing you were Giles right now, and it’s too late to change what you’ve done. YOU: Thanks for having me. It’s an important issue that needs attention right now. The camera pans you out. You silently excuse yourself and check your phone. [[@AliCornwall|Twitter]] has hundreds of new mentions. As you begin to scroll through, a technician taps you on the shoulder. “Call from [[your editor]] Charlie,” he says. “Sounded important.”

<img src="images/static.gif" alt="White noise" /><<audio "ecg" play volume 0 fadein>> The cameras are rolling. Callum smiles at you, stacks his papers, says, “And with us tonight, we have Ali Cornwall, anchor and former West Africa correspondent for BBC London. So, you were recently in Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola epidemic, is that correct?” You nod, ruthlessly ripping open the wound of that trip, and launch right into it, knowing Callum will let you talk. You describe the white-suited medical professionals wrapping and carrying corpses by hand, four to a body, filling common graves that were later doused and lit on fire. How you risked infection yourself, entering a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, stepping over a forbidding pile of corpses into a stench that made you gag, made you doubt the scientific knowledge that Ebola is not airborne. The walls were thick with flies. They carpeted even the living, who lay on cots in their own waste with buckets of vomit at their bedsides. You nearly lifted a little girl in a pink dress because at first glance she looked like your niece, except with blood and vomit all around and the empty eyes of an old, old woman who has learned to expect nothing. Near her, a dead man with rigid clenched hands, like he was still trying to hold on to life. <img src="images/ebola-hospital.jpg" alt="Ebola patients in the hospital" /> It blurs so neatly into your experience as a hostage, that when Callum prompts gently, “It means something, I suppose, that you’re so affected by this, since you’re no stranger to harrowing experiences.” You’re at fever pitch yourself. You acknowledge that traumatic experiences can’t be compared, but here is an epidemic affecting people who look like you, and how can you not be affected? You start talking about the medical convoy that got you out of Monrovia, arguing with patrols about quarantine, a woman named Halima you met in Makeni, Sierra Leone, in a hospital where she lay mildly feverish but not yet vomiting or hemorrhaging; she was confused; she had abided by the warnings, touching no one, not even to kiss her dead child goodbye, not even her husband when he fell ill; when he returned from hospital and quarantine she embraced him, they made love, and life went on as normal until she woke up ill. She knows she is dying. These hospitals are the white man’s death-traps. You have to agree. You saw nurses in t-shirts and blue-jeans, no protective gear, not even gloves, not refraining from touching their patients to check temperature, clean them, feed them, offer human comfort. You saw family members grieving over their dead loved ones according to custom, touching and kissing their faces and hands. You did not see enough education about preventing the spread of disease. How could Halima have listened to all the warnings, after all, and not have known that Ebola survives in semen for 82 days after symptoms have resolved? It’s not the same thing as your hostage experience, but you know Callum was extending an opportunity to you, so you strive to make the connection: the need for freedom of information, spread by locals. Burning a local journalist alive sends a clear message. So does the gang-rape of a woman whose face had been bashed in, her eyes glinting dark in her swollen face. The way she reached for you, where you lay a tied-up, silent witness, as the soldiers took their turns before shooting her in the head. No warning. They wanted you to see what they could do to you, too. <img src="images/burning.jpg" alt="The immolation of a reporter" /> You use Callum’s words to make the gallows-humor joke, “My stupid courage, I suppose, that I put myself in these situations so I can come home and relate it to viewers here at home.” Callum is flicking his papers with a finger. A decisive tic, not a nervous one, processing something problematic you’ve done that it’s too late to change. You shake off the storytelling haze, suddenly alert. “Maybe my mistake,” he says. “But in our last interview, I believe you said you were blindfolded.” You were, weren’t you. You’re on live television. The Nightly News. Representing BBC London. [[Your blood runs cold. |apology]]

<<audio "twitter" loop play>>@KaiJu33 Thought you’d care enough abt yr own ppl to give it some feeling @Ali_Cornwall @jinxjinxjinx Srsly Ali? Could have gotten the #s anywhere. Expect better from you @Ali_Cornwall @fortytwo42 Looks like Knockout Ali just went down for the count. @Ali_Cornwall @BBCLondon @inoyok Expected to hear what it feels like on the ground but guess not #lazyjournalism @Ali_Cornwall @catswhochocolate If I wanted a gloss on my news I’d watch Fox. Wtf, @Ali_Cornwall? @BuffyXAngel327 Once more with feeling, please? @Ali_Cornwall @TheLagoonThing Crazy how I care even less about this after hearing @Ali_Cornwall’s lackluster report. The public has spoken, and your heart is sinking. Hardly expecting a pep talk, you [[return Charlie's call|your editor]].

<<stopallaudio>>You return Charlie’s call with some amount of trepidation. When he picks up, his voice is muffled with background sound, and you have a feeling he’s at home in front of the television right now. “Take a look at Twitter yet?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for your answer. “What happened up there, Ali? You’re too much an old hat at this to freeze up." “It’s not that…” He interrupts you. “You know as well as I do, maybe better, that what makes a good anchor is storytelling. You’re a good reporter, you’ve got the facts, you don’t need to prove that to me. Up there, watched on live television, you need to be a storyteller with a good story. People love you because you’re a storyteller. They can connect with what you’re saying. They see it in their mind’s eye. They’re right there with you, in the thick of what’s happening. Why the bloody hell else do you think I sent you back to Africa? It would have made more sense to let Giles cover it.” You’re silent. Whatever impulse made you turn to the unadulterated facts is now slowly gutting your career. As you drive home to your flat, you think of everything you have given up to be where you are today, and of how replaceable you all are, like moving parts in a relentless machine. It’s the double-edged nature of journalism, isn’t it, that a journalist who can’t impose bias and embellishment in just the right ways, who can’t narrativize the facts through personal experience and creativity, is no longer a journalist; but a journalist who can’t be trusted is not a journalist, either. It’s the proverbial rock-and-a-hard-place in any broadcast news institution, BBC London more so than others, and you will arrive home and sit in your dark flat for hours before you dare turn on your television and watch the replays, the critiques, pundits wondering why your silver tongue failed you, and then the last-ditch attempt for ratings, the livestream interview with Giles Hall, who graciously concedes, "I think Ali got an eyeful when he was down here, maybe it hit a little too close to home." <img src="images/whisky-pour.gif" alt="Drinking away the future" /> You will pour yourself a glass of whiskey. And you will dream you had done it differently, while you wait for your tenure to [[end|Begin]].