A striking and illuminating account about the realities of reporting the war in Iraq and the evolution of an untested journalist into the Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau chief.
When she arrived in Iraq in May 2004 as the most junior member of the Washington Post bureau staff, Jackie Spinner entered a war zone where traditional reporting had become impossible. In her gripping account, Jackie goes beyond the headlines to reveal the contemporary challenges of reporting news in a place where danger and fear accompany journalists everywhere. But Tell Them I Didn’t Cry is also Jackie’s vivid and intensely personal story of the difficulties of being a woman in a country where woman are not free, and where most of the other journalists are men; of the Iraqi staff who became her family, close friends and colleagues; of disillusioning negative responses from Post readers in the States; and of becoming all too accustomed to mortars and car bombs, body guards and flak jackets.
Tell Them I Didn’t Cry features brief vignettes from Jackie’s identical twin sister, Jenny, that offer a window into families waiting and worrying at home, as well as an epilogue about Jackie’s return to Iraq in the fall of 2005 to cover the trial of Saddam Hussein. But most of all, it brings to life a reporter’s exhilarating story of nine months covering the war from its center—in Baghdad, Fallujah, Kurdistan and Abu Ghraib—and being transformed, eventually, from rookie correspondent into a seasoned foreign reporter.
Jackie receives Alumni Achievement Award and gives commencement address at SIU Carbondale, May 2005.The Daily Egyptian was her college newspaper.
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Just in! Jackie's speech at the JEA/NSPA convention
