War correspondents are a subclade of the foreign correspondent genus. They are both elite members of the journalistic profession, at least as it used to be configured, but the war correspondent sits atop the pyramid.
He (for it was mostly men, though there were some memorable women like Kate Webb) was the equivalent of the men who tamed the West. He took risks and knew he could get killed anytime, because this happened to a lot of people he knew.
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But above all, he was not boastful, and never, ever maudlin. Taciturn? Yes, often. Cranky? You bet, especially about editors at home who had no field experience and made impertinent demands. An immodest braggart? Never.
Which is to say, none of the ones I have met ever behaved like Scott Pelley, the fired 60 Minutes newsreader who, in response to some disparaging remarks President Donald Trump made about him, boasted to the New York Times, as he emotionally held back tears throughout, that having been in battlefields as a reporter made him a combatant for his country.
Pelley did more than just engage in braggadocio. The combination of getting fired and having the president dump on him seems to have taken him close to what looked like a televised breakdown on New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s podcast, The Interview.
Perhaps it’s best to quote both men at length. This was the exchange between the Chief Executive and the 37-year veteran of CBS News’s flagship weekly program, an exchange which took place over two podcasts with very different female journalists working for rival Big Apple dailies — Trump’s interview taking place over New York Post columnist Miranda Devine’s podcast Pod Force One.
“I think Scott Pelley’s got his own problems. He’s terrible,” Trump said to Devine just hours before CBS News fired Pelley for insubordination on June 2. “Look, Scott Pelley’s a stiff, and he’s afraid, and he’s part of this, you know, gang of crooked, stupid people that don’t care about our country.”
Asked to react the next day by Garcia-Navarro, Pelley swallowed hard, and didn’t hold back: “I’ve never worn the uniform, but I’ve been in combat for this country. In Afghanistan, and Iraq, Kuwait. Been shot at. Spent nights in foxholes filling up with water in the desert. I’m not aware that the president has ever done any of those things for his country. You become a journalist because you love the First Amendment, you love the country. While all the other descriptions the president used about me might be applicable, not that one,” said Pelley, visibly coming close to tears as he intoned those last words.
Except that those who know the breed were immediately able to spot a phony. “Proper war correspondents rarely talk like this about their experiences,” posted caustically on X one of Britain’s best known and hardest-bitten journalists, Andrew Neil, now at the Daily Mail.
I have been in battlefields as a journalist, in Jalalabad and Kabul, and in places where there were daily clashes between protesters and soldiers, like Korea, Islamabad, and Panama (where a soldier first pointed a gun at me in 1988, and where I was later arrested, thrown into prison overnight, and kicked out of the country a day later).
Which means that, though I was never a war correspondent, I have met my share. Neil is right on target.
War correspondents go from conflict to conflict. They have developed an important set of skills, and know their trade. Some of them, not all, are individuals who have internal demons that they are trying to shake off.
I remember sitting with one war correspondent at the “UN Club” in Kabul, the recreational facility inside the UN compound, which in the early 1990s was the only place in that city where you could get a beer, as he related to me the heartbreak that drove him to that life. We had a moment. He then went to cover the breakup of Yugoslavia, and was killed in a war in Africa a few years after that.
These war correspondents know they haven’t “been in combat” for their country. They usually can arrive and leave anytime they want. If they don’t want an assignment, they can say no to their editor. None of those things are true for the soldier, who in some countries are drafted, but even if they volunteer, they must go to the front line when the generals say so.
We speak of stolen valor a lot, and it usually applies to anyone who falsely claims to have been in the military. Pelley seems to have done it twice, first impersonating a war correspondent, and then comparing that imaginary role to that of a soldier.
NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO WORK AT CBS OR ANYWHERE ELSE
CBS fired Pelley because he was rude to his new boss, Bari Weiss, in a meeting. Garcia-Navarro, trying to inject some reality into an interview where Pelley was acting as both entitled and an emotional mess, asked him at one point:
“But, Scott, in a meeting, you accused Bari Weiss, the head of the network, of wanting to murder the show, of coming into 60 Minutes with the agenda to dismantle the institution. And you did not think that that was going to have repercussions that could lead to your firing?”
As Andrew Neil wrote, “This guy, who few even in America had heard of until he was fired, is a pompous, preening, solipsistic peacock. @CBSNews is lucky to be rid of him.”