By Julie E. Washington
NEW ORLEANS, LA (May 5, 2008) – CNN war correspondent Mark Biello – veteran of hurricanes, political campaigns and bloody conflicts in remote parts of the globe – was uncharacteristically relaxed. Instead of avoiding snipers or battening down for a Category 4 storms, he was lounging next to a hotel pool in New Orleans.
This man rarely slows down. Biello, 47, was on the ground in all the hot spots of the 1990s, including Somalia, Sarajevo and Baghdad. He entered New York the day after the Twin Towers fell and was at Ground Zero while the ruins were still smoking. He stood on Wall Street amid millions of blowing documents and chunks of wreckage.
"It was very surreal. Very, very bizarre," said Biello, who was in New Orleans to cover the Emir of Qatar touring the city after donating $100 million for Katrina relief.
Biello was in New Orleans before, during and after Katrina. He personally saved 16 people and helped rescue another 40 by using the light on his camera to guide rescuers. "There just wasn't anyone else around," Biello said.
In 2003 he mounted a videophone on a Humvee and transmitted live images from the desert while embedded with Marines during Operation Iraqi Freedom. "The technology was just starting to come out," said Biello, whose war career was fictionalized in the HBO movie "Live From Baghdad."
His new title with CNN is senior photojournalist, to reflect the fact that the job involves so much technology. Within three minutes of his arrival at the YFZ Ranch polygamist camp in Texas, he had uploaded images to CNN via a tiny satellite dish that plugged into his car's cigarette lighter. "You can almost go live instantly with this stuff," said Biello.
CNN viewers are familiar with his images as well as his face; he's comfortable on both sides of the camera. The news organization offered to officially make him a correspondent, but he turned it down. "I prefer to stay behind the camera," he said. "My love and passion is still the camera."
It was a passion he discovered growing up outside of Chicago. As a teenager, he built a darkroom in his basement to develop black-and-white photos of high school and college sports. When he picked up a videocamera while studying broadcasting at Columbia College in Chicago, he had a knack for it.
He was among CNN's first staffers at its Atlanta headquarters. A few years later, he helped open CNN's Berlin bureau and shot the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The first war CNN sent him to was Haiti. "I was terrified. I was scared," he admitted.
Sarajevo and Bosnia were, in his opinion, the most dangerous hot spots. The Serb soldiers were trained to kill, and they targeted journalists, he recalled. Biello made sure that his affairs were in order before venturing into the region.
The first time journalists come under fire, they learn quickly if they are cut out for war reporting. Biellow turned to seasoned journalists to learn how to handle himself in dangerous situations.
War reporters learn to trust their own intuition as well as their teammates' gut feelings. If someone doesn't want to go down a certain street, the team won't go, Biello explained.
A little mojo doesn't hurt. Biello always keeps a bandanna tied aound the top of his camera, even if he's filming a cooking show. It's a good luck charm, and it's practical. A bandanna can be used to stanch a bleeding wound, or be tied over the face to keep out the stench of decomposing bodies.
"It's my little security blanket," he said.
He hasn't gone into a war zone since Katrina, but maintains that he hasn't lost his stomach for it. "That's what we do," he said. CNN has asked him to return to Iraq, and he'll go if there is a major troop pull-out. Since he covered the troops' arrival, it would mean closure to be there at the end.
Biello is the type of guy who worries about how the media would cover a dirty bomb explosion in a major American city. Who would venture inside the hot zone, and how would those reporters be picked? Would a media pool be set up? How would the radiation affect broadcast equipment? Before you think it's a far-fetched scenario, remember that no one thought the Twin Towers would come down, either.
He doesn't think of himself as an adrenaline junkie. He doesn't think he's brave. Katrina made him a more compassionate person; he volunteers to help the homeless and the hungry. He's also undergone counseling to deal with the trauma of his Katrina experiences.
What's next? "That's a good question," Biello admits. He's focusing on learning new technology, like online editing and videophones. Broadcast reporters can take a disc out of a digital camera, connect to a hotel's Internet line and transmit to CNN for broadcast.
He is currently shooting on HD an upcoming six-hour documentary on blacks in America. It's a challenge to frame the interviews because HD is an elongated image, and the hyperclear image shows dust and raindrops on the lens that don't show up during shooting, he said.
"It's an exciting, fascinating time," he said.
Biello's high-flying career with CNN is the kind of stuff that other journalists envy and non-journalists can only read about. Book publishers are hot to publish his life story, but Biello doesn't have time to sit still and type on a laptop.
"I should get off my butt and write it," he laughed. Soon he'd be off to the next city, the next assignment.
Biello will deliver a keynote address at NPPA's Convergence '08 in Louisville in May. Also on the line-up at the "greatest week in visual journalism" are featured speakers John Moore, Michel du Cille, Denny Simmons, Scott Jensen, and Kinsey Wilson. Read more about NPPA's exciting Convergence '08 here. The schedule of Friday and Saturday workshops and speakers for Convergence '08 is now online here.
