Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
MIGENNES, France — The African Queen ran roiling rapids under German guns. Fitzcarraldo’s 320-ton steamboat was hauled over a mountain in the Amazon. Our slog up the Seine in Almeria was a bit easier — yet still a love-hate voyage for the books.
This report was meant to be a light palate cleanser before doubling down on despots and dumbasses. But four days on waterways at the crux of the Old World ever since Gauls battled Caesar brought today’s global turmoil into sharp focus.
Heeding history averts crises. Ignoring it creates new ones, made progressively worse by new weaponry and technology. Far too many people today barely remember last week.
Hop aboard for a look at the ship’s log, reportage on the approaching Olympics and flashbacks from the 1980s when I moved onto my home afloat in the heart of Paris, then a livable, laid-back haven in a manageable world.
PARIS — Terry Anderson and Don Mell drove home after tennis on the Beirut corniche, a beautiful seafront by bombed-out rubble in a city where in 1985 it was hard to hear the penny drop. That green Mercedes reappeared yet again. Don said, “I don’t like the look of this.”
Too late. Men bundled Terry into the Merc. One stuck a gun in Don’s face and waved him back. He chased them in his own car but lost them. In any case, what could he do with a wooden racket against assault weapons?
Don, an AP photographer, later spoke with Hassan Nasrullah and asked why he was spared. “Do you fish?” the Hezbollah leader replied. “If you catch a big one, you throw the other ones back.” He wanted prisoners freed in Kuwait, and AP’s Middle East bureau chief was a bargaining chip.
Terry spent 2,454 days in dank cells, often chained to a radiator. Like so many hostages who were eventually freed — and survivors of those who weren’t — he saw the fast-worsening risk to reporters as the reason it is so essential for them to stay at their jobs.