People really in the meat grinder of the front lines are not, for the most part, insured or salaried network correspondents. They're young freelancers. They're kind of a cheap date for the news industry.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the challenges faced by young freelancers on the front lines of news reporting, contrasting them with more established correspondents.
In this quote, Sebastian Junger emphasizes the precarious position of young freelance journalists who report from dangerous locations. These individuals often lack the financial security and benefits associated with full-time employment, making them vulnerable in high-risk situations. By referring to them as 'a cheap date for the news industry,' Junger critiques the exploitation of these freelancers, who are essential for delivering frontline news yet are afforded little protection or compensation.
In practice
In a speech discussing the risks freelance journalists face, I might say, 'As Sebastian Junger pointed out, the young freelancers on the front lines often lack the protections of their salaried counterparts.'
The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.
The cause doesn't have to be righteous and battle doesn't have to be winnable; but over and over again throughout history, men have chosen to die in battle with their friends rather than to flee on their own and survive.
When you're scared, you're still hanging on to life. When you're ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you've never done it before.
Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important.
In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?
I feel no compulsion to be a pundit. As a matter of fact, I really don't have that much to say about most things. Working with hard news satisfies me completely.
If youre a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring.
As I occasionally survey the pack of sycophantic shih tzus in the Washington press corps, wriggling on their bellies to kiss the feet of those in power, I feel plumb discouraged about the future of journalism.
The biggest problem I have in journalism is being quoted or misquoted and then being asked to defend something I haven't said.
Helping set the day's agenda and deciding what we used and editing it, that was a journalistic high point. I liked reporting as well. Just doing the news - the live performance - wasn't important. Working on the desk was.
I'm sometimes embarrassed by how clinical I can become when I'm out reporting.
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