Jane Ferguson details career reporting in war zones in memoir ‘No Ordinary Assignment’

Amna Nawaz:

You often see are Jane Ferguson and war zones around the world for the "NewsHour," but she's taken some time between assignments to pen a memoir called "No Ordinary Assignment."

And she recently came into the studio to sit down and discuss her far-from-ordinary journey.

Jane Ferguson, welcome back to the "NewsHour."

Jane Ferguson, Author, "No Ordinary Assignment": Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Amna Nawaz:

So you have spent years telling other people's stories on the front lines of some of the world's worst modern conflicts.

This is your story, though. How hard was it to turn the lens back on yourself and tell your own story?

Jane Ferguson:

It was surprisingly difficult, especially — at the "NewsHour," we don't want to be the story. As the storytellers, we absolutely are not used to really talking about ourselves in that regard.

Even giving interviews like this, talking about — usually, I'm asked about politics, I'm asked about current affairs. Talking about deeply personal stories, the story of the storyteller, is new to me. And it really took me a long time to sort of get into the flow of it.

Amna Nawaz:

What made you want to do it?

Jane Ferguson:

I am asked a lot, why do I do the work that I do?

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Jane Ferguson:

It's a question that I'm sure you're asked as well. We're all asked this question, especially conflict reporters and war reporters.

And I really wanted to dig deep into an honest answer. And the more I tried to answer that question honestly, we can talk about what foreign affairs mean to us, how important communication is to us. But those of us who find ourselves on the road and living a life on the road as foreign correspondents, we're much more complex than that, much more multifaceted.

And I wanted to write a book, not about a journalist, and not about a career, but about a person, so people can understand who it is that's actually bringing them the news in the evenings.

Amna Nawaz:

And you go all the way back to the beginning of your story.

You talk about what it was like growing up in Northern Ireland in the '80s and '90s. How did those early years impact your desire to want to go into this kind of journalism in particular?

Jane Ferguson:

When I was growing up, I was in a very rural area. I was trying to make sense of the world, as everybody does.

I was this very awkward little girl with a terrible acne and thick glasses. And I was shy and extremely curious. And I was growing up in the midst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, so a lot of violence, a lot of political violence, but it was really something that was somehow shrouded in a certain degree of secrecy.

I was trying to understand the wider world. And that involved just asking a lot of questions. And I was this very precocious little girl. I was growing up in a relatively patriarchal place, where I didn't have a huge amount of professional female role models.

But when you turn the TV on in the evening, I saw these women who were telling stories and traveling the world. And, lo and behold, men were listening to them, and they commanded people's attention. And so that was fascinating to me.

It's also something that I have looked back on in retrospect and seen the uncanny sort of synchronicities of having grown up very, very close to rural IRA strongholds. And I spend so much of my career covering insurgencies. And a lot of there has been a certain degree of fascination and needing to know what causes people to commit acts of violence, otherwise civilians, bakers, taxi drivers, farmers. What causes them to rise up?

And I, of course, look back now, I realize I have spent a lot of my adult life embedding with, talking to, studying, spending time with insurgencies all over the world.

Amna Nawaz:

One of the first on-the-ground wars you cover is the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And there's a story in there that struck me, because it spoke to I think what we all sort of count on in the field oftentimes, which is just luck, that someone runs into you at the right time, you miss the bombing by a matter of seconds.

There's a bombing near your hotel. You're rushing to go cover it. Someone stops you and says, wait. You have to wait because there could be a secondary bombing. You're still learning on the job.

When you look back at your career, how many of those kinds of close calls were there?

Jane Ferguson:

There's probably more than I even know. I often think about, that there are the close calls that we know about.

There have been a number of incredibly near-misses. I write about this in the book. When I was in Syria, and I was in the very early days of the conflict, when we were really still calling it a revolution, but it was turning into an armed uprising, and a very small amount of journalists were getting smuggled into Homs city.

And I was supposed to go in for around a week. That was the original plan. But I left because I was very well aware that the situation was so unstable, that the — this rebel enclave that I was in, in Syria was so vulnerable to attack. I left early. And the next journalist to be brought in was Marie Colvin, who was a much, much more experienced, more senior journalist writing for The Sunday Times of London."

And she was killed there. So there have been times again and again where that's happened, again, in Afghanistan. I left Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul. Myself and my colleague Eric stayed as long as we could. We stayed for 10 days. And then, eventually, the one place that we were able to stay was with the British military.

They said: "Listen, we're clearing this out and handing it over to the Taliban tomorrow. You must get on a flight out of here."

And we got on a flight out. And every single day, we had been standing at the Abbey Gate reporting for the "NewsHour," interviewing Afghans as they were desperately trying to get on evacuation flights. Just a matter of hours after we get on that plane, the bombing goes off at the Abbey Gate.

So I still don't know if it's luck or grace or an act of God, but I have been spared many times in my life. I'm very grateful.

Amna Nawaz:

In this line of work, you also see up close some of the worst of humanity, people in their absolute worst moments, when they have lost everything.

And you write about a story in Somalia, where you're literally watching a child die before your eyes. And what you wrote there struck me.

You said: "In those moments where I'm witnessing the profound vulnerability of someone else, I also feel laid bare. People recognize real empathy. It's the only decent behavior in war reporting."

How do you hang on to that empathy?

Jane Ferguson:

You, first of all, are more aware than you could ever imagine of how blessed your life is. You can never — people ask me, how can you not be jaded, or bitter, or more pessimistic? How are you such an optimistic person?

I actually view it in the opposite direction. How could I not be? I witness people having the worst day of their lives. And, first of all, I struggle a little bit with, what's my place here? Am I helping? Do I have a right to be here? There are all sorts of very difficult issues that we contend with as journalists.

And so the only thing you can do is be as humble as you can in those moments. And I am so often in hospital wards with starving children or at funerals. And I'm a stranger there. And all I can do is be as kind and empathetic and respectful as humanly possible.

Amna Nawaz:

Do you ever get to a point where you think, OK, that's enough, I can't do this anymore?

Jane Ferguson:

I have never thought to myself, I don't ever want to do this again. I don't want to travel anymore. I don't want to do any more reporting, whether it's a crisis, or a natural disaster or a war.

For me, the thing that keeps me going is covering under covered stories. And those are only increasing in number. I can see myself pivoting into covering other things more, more international politics, or climate change, and these sorts of issues, but I don't think I will ever completely hang up my spurs of what I do.

Amna Nawaz:

The book is "No Ordinary Assignment." The author is Jane Ferguson.

Jane, thank you so much. We're so lucky to have you as part of our "NewsHour" family.

Jane Ferguson:

I'm lucky to be here.

Amna Nawaz:

Jane's book is out now. And you can read an excerpt on our Web site. That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.