Embedded journalists Mike and Carlos Boettcher to tell stories of US troops in Afghanistan
BY BRYAN DEAN
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Published: March 22, 2009
Modified: March 23, 2009 at 11:50 am
Mike Boettcher had no problem finding stories to tell in Iraq.
Mike Boettcher is a Ponca City native and OU graduate who has spent 30 years working as a war correspondent for CNN and NBC. He recently quit his job with NBC because he was disillusioned with how the media are covering the war. He and his son will spend 15 months embedded in Iraq and Afghanistan. AP PHOTO
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Getting the information out was a different matter. Boettcher, a
Ponca City native and
University of Oklahoma graduate, gave up his job as a network war correspondent because he wanted to tell soldiers’ stories in a new way.
Mike Boettcher, 54, and his son,
Carlos Boettcher, 22, left for Iraq last summer with the idea of embedding with troops and telling their stories in a way that wasn’t making the nightly news.
After learning some harsh lessons about how much work it would be to get those stories home, Boettcher is giving it another try, this time in
Afghanistan and with the help of
The Oklahoman and
NewsOK.com.
Mike and Carlos Boettcher will spend the next several months getting up close and personal with American troops in Afghanistan, posting blogs, video and photos on "On the Line,” a new Web site that’s been developed by NewsOK.com. It’s at NewsOK.com/ontheline.
"Our problem when we initially got there was not access to the troops and getting the material,” Mike Boettcher said. "We had hundreds of hours of video and thousands of photos. It was getting it delivered and trying to do a Web site ourselves.”
Sending a simple e-mail could often take half an hour using available Internet connections in Iraq.
So Mike Boettcher flew home, leaving his son in Iraq, to find a better way. Boettcher, who worked for 30 years as a correspondent for
NBC and
CNN, said he was accustomed to having an army of supporting staff to worry about the technical side.
"It was a million times harder than I thought it was going to be,” Boettcher said.
Internet availability in Afghanistan is even more limited than in Iraq, so Boettcher said he’s going prepared.
"We are going to return with more sophisticated satellite communications equipment, which we think is the missing piece,” Boettcher said.
That missing satellite communications piece comes from a separate partnership with
ABC News, which will link to the On the Line blog on NewsOK and air some video reports from the Boettchers.
What won’t change is the pair’s status as independent journalists and their approach of going out of designated safe zones to see the war up close.
The Boettchers’ previous work from Iraq will also be posted on the blog. Mike Boettcher’s wife, Katherine, will also blog.
Mike Boettcher said he is well aware of the dangers he and his son will face, but he feels an obligation to report the stories he knows are out there.
Many media companies are pulling their correspondents out of Iraq and Afghanistan because of high costs and waning interest from the public as violence has decreased in Iraq.
"The soldiers loved this,” Boettcher said.
"We were just out there listening to them and documenting what they were doing, which they were very proud of.”
To follow Mike and Carlos in Afghanistan go to NewsOK: On the Line
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