Jan 7: Adam Zivo, Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw
Thread published December 20, 2022
Adam Zivo- End-of-year Ukraine journalism recap
End-of-year Ukraine journalism recap – article 1/20. At the beginning of the war, a flood of refugees arrived into Warsaw. Women, children, and the elderly – eyes dim with exhaustion.
What was it like? Who helped them?
Heartache at Warsaw train station as thousands of traumatized Ukrainian refugees pour in- The National Post
This was my first on-the-ground article about the war in Ukraine, and my first time doing any conflict reporting. Seeing all of the refugees in the train station was emotionally devastating – I wasn't yet desensitized to these things.
It was the children that broke me. The mothers trying to soothe their crying toddlers despite their own exhaustion. The "gallery" of crayon drawings on a station window. The confusion and defeat in many of the children's eyes – no children's eyes should ever look like that.
Mom called me from Canada while I was there. I couldn't speak. She asked what was wrong. I didn't know what to say. What could be said? A long pause. "Mom... the children. It's awful." And then I cried, and I felt guilty for crying because it was so useless. What can tears do?
But the kindness of Warsaw cut through this misery. Poles tirelessly volunteered to help these refugees. The woman interviewed here, Fed, had no voice left – she'd used it up at the station, coordinating aid. No sleep. Random citizens walked into the station with boxes of food.
I hope that Poland's generosity and great-heartedness is never forgotten.
Changing course, though, I want to make a note on the writing style used here, the intentional choice to take a memoirist approach, and how style can matter when writing about politics.
The invasion of Ukraine has, unfortunately, been mired in disinformation and propaganda. People don't know which narratives to trust. Coming into this, my focus was on how to report in a way that was not only evocative, but trustworthy.
Just before the invasion of Ukraine, Canada was paralyzed by mass protests by truckers who occupied our capital for several weeks. That event, too, had dramatically competing narratives which made it hard to believe what was going on.
During the trucker protest, @mattgurney wrote an excellent series of on-the-ground dispatches. He didn't pretend to be an omniscient eye hovering over the event – his writing called attention to himself as an observer, and all the baggage thats come with that.
Because Matt's work called attention to his own subjectivity, I found it more trustworthy. As a reader, I had the freedom to judge Matt's experiences for myself, rather than have them hidden away beneath a veneer of omniscient narration.
I've often tried to use the same approach with my Ukraine reporting – to avoid presenting as an omniscient narrator and to instead write as a human being who is seeing and feeling inside the story. Gonzo journalism, or journalism-as-memoir. Whatever term you prefer.
At a time when trust in media is low, readers should feel better acquainted with their narrators. They should know that journalism does not fall from the sky and is always written by real people. Real people are easier to believe.
That kind of approach has trade-offs – the risk of inserting yourself into the story too much, for example. But with a good editor, you can find the right balance.
Anyways, I hope that makes sense and that this meta-analysis of journalism was useful in some way. If there are other aspects of Ukraine reporting that you'd want more commentary on in future posts, let me know. This retrospective series is a work-in-progress.
You can find my other end-of-year Ukraine recaps in this thread. I'll be adding to the thread as new recaps are written.
