Hedging Our Bets

by Juliet Fletcher

Chris Hedges uses his instinct for tackling the nub of an issue practically everyday. As a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, Hedges has confronted harrowing scenes of conflict in Israel, Latin America and Bosnia. As an American journalist, he has turned his insight on the landscape of wartime emotion and action as manifested on our home turf.

In his new book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (PublicAffairs), Hedges sifts through the reasoning behind the palpable shift in national identity and community behavior under the shadow of war. As he writes, ãThe communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation.ä Whether partly resulting from herd mentality or the dramatic effect of propaganda, the phenomenon of wartime solidarity is clearly present today, managing, as Hedges puts it, to ã[wipe] out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation.ä

As a reporter who has spent a majority of his time in one war zone or another, Hedges endorses farsighted responsibility on the part of war-wagers, an outlook more complex yet at least as idealistic as straightforward pacifism. Hedges will be joined by Inquirer foreign correspondent Thomas Ginsberg at this weekâs forum on wartime media reporting at Bucks County Community College. Together, they will divulge their own experiences of trying to research a story under wartime conditions, and will discuss concerns over media bias and censorship, the results of interference from governments with vested interests in massaging the message.

"On Deadline, Under Fire"forum featuring foreign correspondents Chris Hedges of he New York Timesand Thomas Ginsberg of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Wed., March 12, 10 a.m., free, library auditorium, Bucks County Community College, 275 Swamp Road, Newtown, 215-968-8165, www.bucks.edu/war.