Painting a Picture of Gorazde

Because my topic is about journalism on the war zone and the challenges that accompany taking on such a job, Joe Sacco's account of Gorazde immediately piqued my interest. From Joe's perspective, we are able to witness the slaughter and pillage of innocent Bosnian Muslims, who must endure the agony of missing family members, the sadness that arises from seeing their Serb neighbors don a rifle and a knife with ease and turn their backs on friends and neighbors, and the anger in knowing, but not being able to do anything, about children now forced to dwell in cramped orphanages without a mother or a father. Through comics, Sacco is successfully able to portray the emotions and both the physical and mental impacts surrounding the sad events that occurred in Bosnia.

What I have discovered in reading about journalism in general, is that journalists must make a conscious choice in everything they do, every interview they compose, every article they write. Sacco demonstrates just how selective one must be. During his time in the safe area designated by the U.N., Gorazde, Sacco undoubtedly had a variety of information and resources at his fingertips and therefore, when writing his comic-book novel, Safe Area Gorazde, he had to decide what stories to include. It was not simply a matter of who Sacco felt deserved the attention of their story being publicized but also a desire to create awareness, and awareness could be felt most passionately in the stories of fathers who had to watch as their children were killed, the stories of heartless Serb officials who slit the throat of truckloads of Bosnian Muslims and tossed them over a cliff, their military boots shuffling around in puddles of blood, and the stories of Bosnians who had to watch their homes, their lives, everything they knew, burn to the ground. Sacco stresses how easily it was for Serbs to sever their ties with their Bosnian Muslims friends, neighbors, and acquaintances and start the cleansing campaign. Imagine: a gun is pointed in your face and you have no idea why this is happening to you and you ask the person on the other end of the gun why he is doing this, his hand on the trigger. As he looks you in the eye, you recognize your former neighbor. Sacco forces his readers to witness for themselves the atrocities his characters had to endure, and question why they had to endure them in the first place and why the rest of the country remained ignorant of this four year genocide. He develops his characters to the point where we feel empathy for their struggles and grief for their pain, and as I continued to read the informative account of Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, it transformed from a personal account of a journalistic expedition to a tragic story.

I found it particularly striking how easy it was for me to read Joe Sacco's account of such a gruesome and disturbing topic. Of course, it was not easy for me to read about the mass genocide, the screams of women, and the mass killings, but I believe that Sacco presented the information in an appropriate and informational way. It is difficult to write about something so horrific in the first place but the fact that Sacco could do so and do so in a truly mesmerizing way is amazing. Sacco's unique illustrations and stories demonstrates how diverse journalists are. Journalists have a responsibility to their audience to give the most accurate and unbiased representation of their topic, but at the same time, they have some flexibility in their style of writing. Whereas I once would have never considered a comic book to be a form of journalism, I am now convinced it is one of the best forms of journalism. If only I could draw...

The Current State of My Research

During the course of our research week in the library, I devised an organizational method that suits my topic and will keep me focused while writing my research paper. I really enjoyed how note cards could be numbered and structured so that major themes were presented in an easy way based on the different sources. Therefore, I decided to use this procedure but also color code the note cards based on articles, books and media sources, such as documentaries and online interviews. From the beginning, my research topic was headed in a good direction: I knew what I wanted to do and where to look; however, it was much harder to narrow it down to the main questions I wanted to answer, only because there were so many questions to begin with. My rough outline looks a bit like this:
-Background of the Iraq War ("War On Terror") using a book dedicated to the war and how the involvement of the United States
-Pros and cons of embedded journalists, unprecedented access but at the same time, limited mobility on battlefield and threat of media censorship, using an article that details these two factors
-A discussion of war journalism in general, how embedded journalists have evolved over the years, using a short, Youtube documentary
-Narrow down to embedded journalists in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan, using various articles from journalists who have returned or are currently blogging about their stay
-Preparation for becoming embedded, a variety of steps and protocols that must be taken before a journalist leaves, using articles that describe the lengthy process in preparing journalists for the mental strain of war and adapting to the circumstances
-Examples of embedded journalists using articles and books
-Psychological glance: impact on journalists and motivation for going in the first place, what being embedded in the war does to them both mentally and physically, using articles from embedded journalists
-What sets the Iraq War apart from other media coverage involved in other wars
And the questions I am planning on answer include:

• Why do journalist make the conscious choice to become embedded, knowing full well the dangers involved? What is their motivation?
• What does being embedded do to journalists both mentally and physically?
• How does war journalism distort the news?

Now that I have this basic outline, I can start to use the resources I have and take notes, adding to the note cards if need be and rearranging my outline as I see fit. I am first reading and annotating the articles before I tackle the books and I plan to take a trip to my own library and the UWM library to search for any other resources.