What I learned reporting in the wake of Paris’s deadliest hours since WWII

Last Friday evening, I was getting ready to leave the newsroom in New York, looking forward to a do-nothing weekend, when the first reports of the Paris attacks began coming in.

My colleagues and I watched cable news and Twitter reports about hostages and suicide vests; what unfolded was a Friday night in the City of Light destroyed by extremists looking to kill and maim as many people possible.

Within 24 hours, I was on a plane en route to Paris to report on the aftermath of the attacks.

There’s often a pattern to these events. Reporters from around the world descend on a single spot — in the case of Paris, it’s the Place de la Republique, where a statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French republic, presides over the busy square.

White satellite trucks occupy every curbside parking space. Reporters mill around the sites of makeshift memorials, introducing themselves and looking to interview eyewitnesses and victims. You run into old colleagues from other networks; producers, camera operators and correspondents.

Journalists who find themselves covering a tragic story as it unfolds often hear a nagging voice in their heads: What am I doing that’s different? Am I telling my audience anything they don’t already know? Are my questions, is my intrusiveness, causing more harm than good?

Tonight on @newshour @sreenivasan asks Parisians how France should respond to Friday’s attacks.

A photo posted by @stephenmfee on Nov 16, 2015 at 8:05am PST

As Paris began to re-emerge from its deadliest hours since World War II, our team set out to interview residents around the city and ask their opinions about how the country should react.

We spent the morning at the Gare du Nord railway station asking about borders and refugees, when we saw police stop a group of young men — none over the age of 30 — and ask for their passports. They carried backpacks and bedrolls, but they looked like they hadn’t slept in days.

We followed them outside where we learned what the police suspected, that they were refugees. While he wouldn’t speak on camera, I spoke with a 22-year-old from Iraqi Kurdistan. He’d overstayed France’s 30-day legal window to stay in the country and was looking to board the next train toward Calais, where refugees are massed in camps looking to continue on to the United Kingdom. 

As the week wore on, we spoke to experts and politicians, but I was personally struck by the stories we learned from the young Parisians who spend their evenings in the bars and cafes in the 10th district where the attacks took place.

I reported about young Parisians who struggle to identify as both Muslim and French. I helped film an interview with a British woman who was held hostage in the Bataclan, laying on the floor hoping a gunman standing just above her wouldn’t notice she was alive.

I met the editor of a children’s magazine and her cartoonist husband who created a special issue of their publication to explain the attacks to kids. They were gracious enough to invite us into their suburban home. Sitting at their dining room table, I learned the word for fork (fourchette) from their two-year-old son.

Parisians sing the national anthem following a moment of silence. A video posted by @stephenmfee on Nov 16, 2015 at 4:31am PST

After this weekend, our small team will leave Paris. Having been here for just a week, I hope that what we’ve done has added value and nuance to a story that thousands of reporters have been covering.

Soon it will be on to the next story, the next city, the next interview. But as always, I’m grateful for the kindness of total strangers willing to share their personal stories and opinions.

The best I can hope for is that our audience learned as much from them as I did.