Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Richard Parry of Frontline News describes the changes in war reporting over the past 17 years, based on his own experiences and those of his friend, the photographer Robert King. Sarajevo, 1993: It's 10am in the Holiday Inn - Bosnia's Mecca for journalists - and standing at the bar in his hicksville dungarees is Robert King. He knocks back a tumbler of jungle juice, looks me in the eye and says with a Tennessee lilt, "I lived in Brooklyn for six years. I thought I knew what a war was like. But this place is crazy." In the intervening years we have definitely been through some crazy times. This was Robert's first war. It was mine, too, as a freelance TV reporter with Frontline News. He'd just stepped off the plane intent on becoming a war photographer and winning a Pulitzer Prize. I had similar goals and similar naivety. Both of us in our early 20s, hopeful, ambitious, unjaded and looking for experience of the real world. FIND OUT MORE Storyville: Killer Image - Shooting Robert King will be broadcast on BBC Four on Monday 24 May at 2200 BST Or watch later on the BBC iPlayer There are many books and films glorifying the noble reporter but few that have shown the hacks as we knew them in Yugoslavia, especially the freelancers at the bottom of the food chain. The ones with little money or protection who scrambled around digging up stories that appeared later on the major networks, totally uncredited. They drank more, partied harder, got shot more often and had the kind of black humour that could lift you out of the worst of times. Miss Sarajevo Robert and I rented accommodation in Sarajevo and set about the task of getting stories and making money. When the city was totally cut off by Serbs, during American airstrikes, we worked for innumerable networks running from pillar to post - donning different hats for each job, saving a tidy sum. Robert King has also worked in Afghanistan Then in fallow times we hung out with Miss Sarajevo and her friends in bombed-out pool halls, sharing Marlboro Reds (common currency in the beleaguered city). Looking back on it, I now realise we had huge freedom to cover stories. Although it outranked all recent conflicts in terms of the attrition of journalists, few restrictions were imposed on us. But it could be crazy. One day the Croat-Muslim alliance in Mostar fell apart. Robert and I headed for the nearby town of Jablanica. We left our car with a friendly local, took a guide, packed our kit on to three donkeys, and started the four-hour accent. We never got to Mostar. Militiamen on the mountain said our papers weren't in order. Escorted back down the hill, I was shown into a secluded, tumbledown HQ building and met a 12-year boy wielding a handgun. To my dismay, I soon realised he was in charge. We were accused of spying and all manner of wrongdoings. The boy spun the chamber of his gun several times and wanted to play Russian Roulette. It took several hours and much convincing to let us go. They dumped us back in Jablanica without our bulletproof jackets, our car or cameras. And herein lies one of the freelance dilemmas: with cameras valuing £40,000, with no insurance - what do we do? We waited. Eleven days in this town under fire, full of refugees, trying to win friends in the mafia and hoping to be reunited with the tools of our trade. Kidnaps There were dangerous moments during our first years covering the Yugoslav wars but we weren't really targeted. The first signs of change came in 1994 in Tuzla, when mujahideen (probably foreign fighters) murdered three aid workers. A US soldier at an urban training facility in Kentucky But it was in Chechnya, where Robert and I went next, that aid workers and journalists became routine targets. Kidnaps were lucrative for the gangs. They helped fund the war, and the terror they inspired was a useful propaganda weapon. So we had to be more cautious, more careful of where we went and with whom. I caught up with Robert again in 2007 as he was heading for Baghdad. Robert, unlike many of our colleagues who had either died, burned out or switched to safer work, was still a war snapper - a little more rounded, less naive, cynical perhaps but still the big-hearted, good-humoured character that I knew and loved. The US forces had honed their skills in "working with the press". As embedded press you were looked after, protected, fed and watered by Uncle Sam, while the danger of being attacked or kidnapped was very high outside the wire. Not surprisingly, many of us chose to cover the war in this way. Of course, the same forces that look after you can also control what you record. Of the few days we spent with the US 2-12 Cavalry we were stymied every time we tried to join missions to pick up wounded soldiers. They could always find an excuse: "No space in the convoy," or "not enough vehicles." At a time when the US government was trying to downplay the human cost - it made sense to restrict the movements of the media. So we looked back at our days in Bosnia with great nostalgia. The way news is gathered has changed radically. It is a testament to Robert's endurance that he is still out there trying make a buck and take the pictures he thinks the world should see.



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