By snoadmin
Air Force Magazine associate editor Marc Schanz, 27, spoke to Cal State Long Beach students Monday about his recent reporting experience in Afghanistan.
Schanz discussed his observations with journalism professor Heloiza Herscovitz’s Global News Media and Introduction to Mass Communication classes. His stories provided insight into the life of U.S. troops in the region.
“You expect things to be going on in a war zone,” Schanz said. “You know, soldiers moving on the ground, bombs exploding, but when I stepped off the plane, it was just very quiet. That was the hardest thing to get used to – the intense quiet.”
Schanz, sent to Afghanistan by his publication, was accompanied by Dallas Morning News photographer Lara Solt. After waiting for spots on a C-130 military prop plane to open up, the two traveled to a U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, in mid-April to cover the transportation procedures of wounded soldiers and civilians. The U.S. military provided the topic, although Schanz notes that he was not overtly censored in the duration of his stay.
“The story we went there to cover was not exactly the story we found,” Schanz said.
Instead, Schanz and Solt saw the hospital’s various amputee victims, injured by hidden landmines in nearby fields.
“There were so many civilians who were missing arms and legs,” Schanz said. “It was hard to see.”
Schanz further recalled his experience with a 3-year-old girl whose eye had been badly cut by a broken car window, which was accidentally shot through near a checkpoint. In Schanz’s translated conversation with the girl’s older brother, he discovered that her family was grateful that she was alive and was not bitter toward the American presence in Afghanistan.
“The civilians I spoke with through my interpreter were either somewhat positive [about U.S. troops in Afghanistan] or indifferent,” Schanz said. His commentary generated several questions from students.
Najeebullah Shinwari, a senior international studies and political science major originally from Afghanistan, asked Schanz how he communicated with Afghani civilians. Shinwari addressed the existence of two languages in the region, Dari and Pashto, and said the latter is more expressive and provides context that the former does not.
“It’s hard to get an accurate feeling from someone if you don’t fully understand the social country of his language,” Shinwari said.
Junior journalism major Misako Miyagawa criticized Schanz’s response to some of the students’ questions.
“The sense that I got from him was that he didn’t give us an idea of his goals or the goals of his magazine,” Miyagawa said. “I think his response made students more skeptical of his role as a ‘military reporter,’ and I didn’t appreciate that as a journalism student.”
“It’s difficult being a journalist now,” Schanz said. “It carries a lot of stigma.”
