reese erlich
Reporting from Around the World, Reese Erlich Was a Beacon of Independent Journalism
The longtime war correspondent, who died earlier this month, embodied the honesty and deep humanity that makes for the very best journalists.
When Reese Erlich died in early April, we lost a global reporter who led by example. During five decades as a progressive journalist, Reese created and traveled an independent path while avoiding the comfortable ruts dug by corporate media. When people in the United States read or heard his reporting from more than 50 countries, he offered windows on the world that were not tinted red-white-and-blue. Often, he illuminated grim consequences of U.S. foreign policy.
The first memorable conversation I had with Reese was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on the way to Iraq in September 2002--as it turned out, six months before the U.S. invasion. He was one of the few journalists covering a small delegation, including Congressman Nick Rahall and former Senator James Abourezk, which the Institute for Public Accuracy sponsored in an attempt to establish U.S.-Iraqi dialogue and avert the looming invasion.
Reese critiqued the basic flaws in U.S. media coverage then beating the war drums, and he also wrote about the "professional" atmosphere that led U.S. journalists to conform.
As the organizer of the trip, I was on edge, and I asked Reese for his assessment. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the Middle East, he provided cogent insights and talked about what was at stake.
After filing stories from various parts of Iraq, Reese returned home to California and we worked together to write alternating chapters of a book that came out two months before the invasion--"Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." (The book is posted online.) Reese's eyewitness reporting and analysis were crucial to the book.
Reese critiqued the basic flaws in U.S. media coverage then beating the war drums, and he also wrote about the "professional" atmosphere that led U.S. journalists to conform.
As President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair methodically lied the U.S. and Britain into a war on Iraq, Reese pointed out: "The Bush and Blair administrations are fighting a two-front war: one against Iraq, another for public opinion at home. The major media are as much a battleground as the fortifications in Baghdad. And, for the most part, Bush and Blair have stalwart media soldiers manning the barricades at home."
In a chapter titled "Media Coverage: A View from the Ground," Reese wrote:
The U.S. is supposed to have the best and freest media in the world, but in my experience, having reported from dozens of countries, the higher up you go in the journalistic feeding chain, the less free the reporting. . . . The journalist's best education is on the job. In addition to journalistic skills, young reporters also learn about acceptable parameters of reporting. There's little formal censorship in the U.S. media. But you learn who are acceptable or unacceptable sources. Most corporate officials and politicians are acceptable, the higher up the better.
Reese summed up: "Money, prestige, career options, ideological predilections--combined with the down sides of filing stories unpopular with the government--all cast their influence on foreign correspondents. You don't win a Pulitzer for challenging the basic assumptions of empire."
While Reese won prizes, including a Peabody Award, he did something far more important--skillfully and consistently challenging "the basic assumptions of empire."
Reese did so with balance and accuracy as a freelancer reporting for such outlets as the Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times Syndicate, Dallas Morning News and Chicago Tribune.
I saw Reese at work in Iran in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2009. He was meticulous and good-natured even when the journey became exhausting and stressful. Unusual stories were usual for him. It was all in a day's work when Reese lined up an interview with a grandson of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Khomeini or got us to a women's rights protest at Tehran University, or when he located an out-of-the-way refugee camp in Kabul where we could interview victims of the war.
Along with his radio reports and articles, Reese went in-depth as the author of "Inside Syria," "The Iran Agenda Today," "Dateline Havana," and "Conversations with Terrorists." Reese's firsthand reporting, multilayered knowledge and wry humor enrich those books. Meanwhile, he reached many people via interviews and public appearances, even when he was fighting cancer in his last months (as when he spoke about U.S.-Iranian relations and the Iran nuclear deal in February).
During recent years, Reese's "Foreign Correspondent" column for The Progressive magazine appeared in kindred online outlets like Common Dreams and the San Francisco-based 48 Hills. His last article--"This May Be This Foreign Correspondent's Final Column"--embodies the honesty and deep humanity that made Reese such a wonderful journalist.
Reese Erlich's work and spirit live on.
This May Be This Foreign Correspondent's Final Column
We all have to go sometime. But knowing approximately when doesn't make it easier.
I'm dying. It's not easy to write these words. But it's true.
In September 2020, oncologists diagnosed me with Stage IV prostate cancer. That means the cancer isn't going away. Doctors can mitigate its spread, but I'll never be in remission. The doctors want to help me maintain a decent quality of life until I die. (I notice that doctors don't actually say "die" or even "pass away." They never say "croak" or "bite the dust" either.)
I followed all of the doctor's orders. I had annual prostate checkups, which included digital exams. (Please don't ask for details.) But most prostate cancer is slow-growing, my doctor assured me. I would die of something else long before prostate cancer, he said.
I was inclined to accept the advice because I also have Parkinson's Disease. I also wasn't pleased with the idea of having a prostate biopsy and possible removal, which can result in incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Turns out the cosmic joke is on me. I got both. They're just as bad as you thought. However, when dying of cancer, you can learn to live with just about anything.
My doctor and I adopted a policy of "watchful waiting," which means having regular checkups and testing that might not otherwise be done. We should have caught the cancer, but we didn't.
The doctors knew my dad had died of prostate cancer in his mid-seventies, about my current age. I had two problems specific to our times. I changed from Blue Cross/Blue Shield to Kaiser. There's an inevitable delay in transferring files and finding new doctors.
And then the second whammy. A few months after joining Kaiser, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Kaiser and most medical facilities stopped seeing patients directly. They conducted office visits through video conferencing. Hah. Try doing a digital exam on Zoom. So I lost many months when the cancer could have been detected.
In September 2020, after visiting the hospital about another matter, I got a most uncomfortable call from my doctor. Go immediately to the emergency room, he said: "Your kidneys are shutting down and we have to find out why." Eventually, tests showed that the cancer had metastasized through my legs, arms, back, and elsewhere. It was putting pressure on the valves allowing urine out of the kidney. Had we discovered the problem much later, I was headed for dialysis or worse.
After some digging, we found a CT scan from February 2019 that had been conducted for another problem. It showed no cancer. That means the cancer developed and spread in nineteen months. That's very fast. In general, prostate cancer develops slowly, but not in some hereditary cases.
I don't know how long I will live. Doctors, unlike bookies, are reluctant to lay odds. I'm undergoing a new therapy as you read this. It may prolong my life by months. Then again, maybe not.
So the question for me is: When to stop writing this column?
"Foreign Correspondent" began in August 2017. I used to think I would keep at it until dementia produced an incoherent jumble of words. Some may argue I reached that stage years ago.
But now it's the fatigue that's driving my decision. The cancer cells suck everything out of your system. I take two-hour naps every day, and the medication does cause drowsiness. I feel a strong urge to operate heavy machinery.
I'm lucky in that my brain seems to be outlasting my body. My mom and brother-in-law died from dementia. It was sad to see their bodies still function while they couldn't remember names of close friends. (As I type, my head nods onto the keyboard as I try to remember the famous TV anchor with whom I once worked.)
Here are just some of the advantages of dying while still coherent:
- You can tell tele-marketers what you really think of them
- You can tell mainstream media editors what you really think of them.
- You can binge watch everything on Netflix while eating multiple bowls of ice cream.
- You can die peacefully in your sleep as did grandpa, not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car. (Full disclosure: This an old joke.)
Messages of sympathy are trickling in. They begin, "I'm so sorry to hear... ." These I don't need. Send jokes and anecdotes, instead. The staff at The Progressive even sent oatmeal cookies.
Well, that's it, folks. I could have written more about my life as a political activist and journalist. But I'll leave that to those who look through my archives stored at Stanford University, or check out my Wikipedia page.
And so I write what I believe will be my final column, confident that I have life left in these withering bones. I hope I've helped explain some complicated world issues you might not otherwise have understood. I hope the activism earlier in my life and my writing and speeches later have helped bring about progressive change.
Oh, the name of that CBS anchor with whom I had the honor of working is Walter Cronk......zzzzzzzz