On March 16, 1986 a young television journalist named John McCarthy set off for a month’s assignment for Worldwide Television News (WTN) in the divided city of Beirut.
At Heathrow he reassured his tearful girlfriend Jill Morrell: ‘It’s only a month, Jilly.’ They were planning to buy a house and get married.
Soon after John arrived in Beirut, two British teachers Leigh Douglas and Philip Padfield and an Irish teacher named Brian Keenan were kidnapped.
The British ambassador urged British citizens to leave. John, with a few days of his assignment remaining, had a nagging feeling that things were closing in around him.
Review: Sam Msibi’s perilous dance on the frontlines
17 Dec 2020
Veteran cameraperson Sam Msibi’s memoir, The Accidental Frontline Journalist, reveals what happens after the credits have rolled, including the trauma that arises from documenting brutality. (Photo: Siphiwe Linda)
Sam Msibi loves to narrate how he got the moniker “Scud missile”. It was in 1991, during the Gulf War. He was working with the Britain-based Worldwide Television News (WTN) in Israel when Iraq launched a missile strike on Tel Aviv. Instead of heading for the bunkers with the rest of the hotel guests, Msibi’s instinct kicked into gear and he ran to his hotel balcony, his camera loaded and ready to fire. Except he was buck naked. His colleagues at WTN also nicknamed him “Sam-Cam” in recognition of the exclusive footage of the Scud missiles he had shot.