Testifying against Mladic ‘the right thing to do’ - Jeremy Bowen

In August 1992, Jeremy Bowen was covering the shelling of a funeral in Bosnia. He watched as a distraught family tried to bury two children killed by sniper fire. He remembers the smell of explosives, and can still hear the screams.

The BBC Middle East editor’s recollections formed part of his testimony, used by the prosecution this week as evidence against Ratko Mladic. The former Bosnian Serb commander is on trial in The Hague for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Mladic denies the charges.

I have been covering the trial and watched Jeremy's appearance.

It was an unusual situation, watching one of my broadcasting heroes re-live the events he reported on, when he was around the same age as I am now. At times his appearance resembled a very coherent, considered two-way - much like you might expect to see on the News at Ten.

Afterwards we crossed the road to a restaurant and recorded this conversation about our respective roles in reporting war and justice.

Did the veteran war correspondent feel it was his duty, as a journalist, to bring his first-hand testimony to court? Not all journalists do - and not least for fear of increasing the risk of their colleagues becoming targets.

Jeremy is adamant that it was the right thing for him to do. For him, it is an extension of the journalist’s ‘creed’ to bear witness, or ‘create a record’. And, increasingly in conflicts, journalists are targeted anyway, he argues.

For me, it's often a challenge to engage audiences in the rather sterile court environment. Eyewitness accounts, and in this case Jeremy's vivid reporting, help to remind us why we should care. 

Listen again to the conversation on Radio 4’s The World This Weekend. (Catch the clip 23 minutes, 42 seconds in.)

Reporting: Describing the scene

Other College of Journalism blogs by Anna Holligan

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