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Get Me to the Gray, presented by COJA Services Inc., is a podcast about the conversations we’re told we shouldn’t have. Hosted by journalist and author Paula Lehman-Ewing, the show brings people with fundamentally different ways of seeing the world into honest dialogue—where we name what divides us and keep talking anyway.
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[00:00:00]
Producer James: This week on Get Me to the Gray
Amjad Tadros: In previous American interventions, like during the war in Yugoslavia, one of the pilots was shot down and was rescued two days later. He became a hero. They made a movie about him. And now we hear about these things. I mean, we heard about a school that was bombed in the first days of the war where a hundred and eighty-five girls were killed.
We didn't see anything. Those people have mothers and parents and sisters, and I mean, we haven't seen anything. And that opens the field to all sorts of different narratives and rumors and inaccuracies. And unfortunately, the truth gets lost in the middle of this whole thing.
Producer James: COJA Services presents Get Me to the Gray. If you find value in this conversation, subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. And if you can, leave a rating or share it with someone. Visit [00:01:00] cojaaservices.com to learn more.
Paula (Host): On the first day of the US-Israeli offensive on Iran, a school was bombed. A hundred and eighty-five girls were killed. We saw nothing, no images, no names, no parents on television, no footage of the building, just a number buried in the coverage, and then the coverage moved on. That's not a failure of access.
Access was restricted, yes. There are no independent journalists operating freely inside Iran, no fixers on the ground, no one to push back on the frame from inside the room. But the silence around those a hundred and eighty-five girls isn't only explained by what we couldn't get to. It's also explained by what we've decided over a long time counts as a story worth stopping for.
My guest today spent [00:02:00] thirty-three years being the person who could make that stop happen. As a Middle East fixer, the local journalist who arranged the access, read the room, spoke the language, held the relationships, and made it possible for correspondents to tell the Middle East to Western audiences.
He won some of those fights. He lost others. The ones he lost, he says, still find him at four in the morning. He's now retired, watching a new war unfold from Jordan. And what he sees in the current coverage assembled in London and Washington and Dubai from satellite imagery and telegram channels and exile sources with their own agendas is what happens when the mechanism he spent his career building is gone.
I want to know what that absence reveals about the coverage, about what the fixer was actually providing when he was there, and about what it means to spend thirty-three years telling the truth about a place to people who have [00:03:00] already decided what that place means.
My guest today is Amjad Tadrus, who spent thirty-three years as CBS News Middle East producer, the person the correspondents couldn't work without, and whose name you might not have heard of. He's covered Iraq wars, the Arab Spring, Syria's chemical attacks. He's won four Emmys, a Peabody, two DuPont awards, and he has a new book out called The Fixer, which is exactly what he was, the local journalist who makes the story possible and disappears before it airs.
He's now retired, watching a new war unfold from Jordan. Amjad, welcome to the show.
Amjad Tadros: Thank you for having me.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): So take me through what a fixer is, not necessarily the job description, but the function. What are you providing that a correspondent couldn't provide [00:04:00] on the own... on their own?
Amjad Tadros: Well, when I joined, you know, CBS News back in nineteen ninety, you know, I mean, the job title was the fixer, and I had no idea what it entails.
And basically, they just send me out with a crew to film. And m- my first day, you know, we show up to a refugee camp to film and of course, I was the only Arabic speaker with the crew, and the, uh, guards there, the police, they looked at me and said, "Do you have a permission?" I said, "What? What does, what is a permission?"
Which is basically a piece of paper that allows you to film. So I said, "No, I don't." And then I realized that, you know, I have to go back and get this piece of paper, which is the permission. So that was my first function as a fixer. So basically what you do as a fixer, you know, you have to, uh... There's no, like, job description.
You're basically their eyes and ears on the ground.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): You spent thirty-three years doing that. At some point, did you see the, um, I'm gonna call it Western media [00:05:00] framing, um, surface in your work? So the kind of interviews they were asking you to get versus the ones you thought they should be getting. So can you tell me a little bit about that push, pull?
Amjad Tadros: Well, it's a mix of both, actually. I mean, to be fair. You know, sometimes, you know, we have to do the story and the interview that has to be done, you know, uh, the, the sort of the day, so to speak. But sometimes when they do, like, more lengthy pieces and in-depth pieces, you know, they, some of the producers and the correspondents who show up have their own idea of how the piece should look like before we even film.
And that's not right, you know? Y- there's no way, you know, the... n- I mean, the way I was trained, you know, by serious professionals is that, you know, you go in, you know, you have your eyes and ears open, you, and you make up your mind You don't go in with the preset ideas of what to do. And, uh, one of the stories that I have done, and I regret actually, it's not in the book , it's about what the so-called honors, honor killing.
And, [00:06:00] uh, back in the '90s in Jordan, there was this story that's always been repeated about s- so-called honor killing, when there is a, a woman whose, uh, brother or father kills, you know, to defend the family honor, so to speak. And usually sometimes, or in most cases, you know, it's, uh, made-up accusations that she's been out with a guy or something.
Right. And I had this producer who showed up from New York, and she wanted to do a story about honor killing, and find somebody who killed his sister. And I was, like, so, like, "No." And, but she kept insisting and insisting, and in the end, we had to go out, and we found this guy who killed his sister. And basically after, you know, what they do, they take them to jail and they get off after three months.
They get a li- a reprieve because it's an honor killing, so to speak. So we brought this guy, you know, who killed his sister and got three months for his [00:07:00] sentence, and he's out. He was, you know, had a tea stand somewhere . And we brought him, and we interviewed him, and I was, felt so bad doing the story.
Seriously. Because, you know, we just gave the guy a microphone to speak and explain what he did, which is terrible.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Mm-hmm. Well, so I think that, you know, I think most people who critique Western coverage of Western war coverage land in one of two places. So there's this idea that the system's broken, and that they're telling you where the story is, even though you're the one on the ground experience it every day.
And then the other, uh, one is that the system is imperfect, but journalism will still get the truth through. So at the end of the day, you're gonna find the man on the street and get that side of the story out. Do you land on one of those two sides based on your personal experience, or is there a third option that you'd argue for?
Amjad Tadros: Well, again, it's a [00:08:00] bit of both, you know? I mean, yeah, you always have to push for the, you know, the local, uh, angle, the local idea, the people who are actually suffering most. And, uh, unfortunately sometimes, especially because you have to see in the news business, there are two types of people. There are the people sitting back in New York who read The New York Times and look at their, you know, wire screens and decide what is happening, and then the people on, you know, who travel here and, you know, sort of see it for themselves.
And sometimes we used to get these weird phone calls, like, you know, because, because things they have read somewhere . It's like, "No, that's not what really happened." So you have to do a lot of pushback But, uh, again, you know, the people I worked with, especially at 60 Minutes, there was always a team effort, and we always managed to, you know, find the right people to speak.
And we always tried to avoid the so-called experts, because I mean, what is an expert? You know, somebody who's never been there and probably just read a couple of books- [00:09:00] Yeah ... and he thinks that he knows more than anybody else. So, you know, we always went for the real people, the people who actually could tell the story better.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Can you tell me, um, I mean, I know that you've, you've talked about a-a-and in your book and in other interviews that, um, that yes, a framing exists, but you can fight, you know, the sy- sys- systemic imma- inaccuracies of mainstream media and get a win. Can you walk me through one of the... Can you walk me through what that looks like, what it, what staying inside and fighting actually produces?
Amjad Tadros: We have one mission is we need to find the truth and report it. And sometimes it's not easy, and sometimes reporting, you know, the truth, like, you know, we went and we interviewed really weird people. And, uh- Mm-hmm ... like, one of the stories w- I do, I did, and it's in the book, it's called "The Bodyguard". I was in Yemen one day and, um, I [00:10:00] bumped into a guy, and it turns out that he was B- Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.
And, you know, we kind of clicked, and he was my age, and I used to take him out and, uh, have, uh, you know, we used to go and eat out. Uh, we used to go and eat Kentucky Fried Chicken every day. And he told me story. And at some point we put him on television, okay? And he spoke his, you know, he told us about, uh, himself, his family, and what made him do whatever he was doing and how he ended up being Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.
And, you know, we got criticized a lot because, you know, we were supposedly giving human face to a terrorist. Although this guy, you know, you could, you know, c- make him, you know, if he was born in a different country, he would have been doing something else. But this is what, where he is. But I thought, you know, he deserves a chance also to explain what happened to him and why he's, you know, he te- he w- he became Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.
You know, he had nothing to do with ni- with 9/11, by the way. He was in jail when it happened. [00:11:00] So this is why he was out of jail when we met him. But, uh, again, you know, and that, tha- and that takes a bit of, uh, convincing. Like, yeah, this guy deserves his chance, even if he was Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Well, and it can also be informative, right? Like-
Amjad Tadros: Totally.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): We, we, we sort of fumble around stories here on, on how people become, like, quote, "radicalized" or, um- Totally ... or sort of pulled in. And so, you know, his story could actually be quite informative.
Amjad Tadros: No, yeah, no, I mean, the problem with the Middle East is that, you know, people in the West don't understand Uh, what it's all about.
And the Middle East is, uh, very, you know, we have really been very ancient societies. We're talking about thousands of years of history. You're talking a lot of, uh, you know, um, family honor. You have talking about tribal, uh, disputes that goes back hundreds of years. And these things you cannot explain in a two-minute report, okay?
So when you come, you know, it's so complicated [00:12:00] to, uh, to report it and see how it's, how it is. And so the, the image that has been transferred of the, in the West about, you know, the Arabs unfortunately, is that we're just a bunch of people who scream very loud, we speak a very weird language that no one understands, and we're angry.
And, uh, and that's not right, you know? The... And because, you know, usually the, the, the media in general, I'm not trying to single out anybody, you know, they try, try to, they... It's easier to film the people on the street who are screaming and yelling, and the people who are staying at home quiet don't get a chance.
For example, in Iraq, during the Saddam's regime, you know, in the early '90s, we used to go there, and the government would take us on the street, and we'd film all these demos- so-called spontaneous demonstrations where you have people screaming and yelling and raising pictures of Saddam and whatever. And they're, you know, they're ready to fight and die and kill Americans and so on.
And this is the [00:13:00] image that people get in the West. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Iraqi people, you know, are very peace-loving people who's sitting at home just wondering what the hell is going on. And most of them, you know, all, mo- every i- Iraqi mother was afraid that the war would happen so that, you know, their children doesn't go, don't go to war.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, but what, what end up on television screens are the angry ones and the people with the loudest voices. Yeah. And, uh, so it's, it's, it's sad. I mean, I have to tell you.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah. Well, and you can see it in, in the reporting where, where, um, where you have, uh, you know, there were... The, the recent coverage in the Washington Post, for example, where you have, um, anything initiated by Israel or America as self-defense and anything initiated by, um, Iran or, uh, um, Palestinian- Aggression
people in government as, as, uh, yeah, as provocation. [00:14:00] Yeah. And so, like, that exists. I'm wondering if in that sense, as a viewer who, you know, especially in the current situation, let's, let's bring it to reality. So we're looking at Iran, which is, uh, has none of the safeguards that were available f- before, right?
There are no independent journalists currently in Iran. There's no one to fix anything. Um, and that line is getting
fed from You know, a secretary of war who deflects a lot, um, and official statements by government. The, so the only people that we actually have are those politicians that you and I both agree are not the best source of information, especially- Yeah ... about a war. And so to me, it looks like a very extreme but, um, natural [00:15:00] evolution of what you're talking about.
Because in the end, it's... We could address the, we could address the structural, mechanical, um, misunderstanding of how the West covers the Middle East, or we could just go with it, and so when something happens like this, we have some, a playbook to work with. It's not accurate, um, and it's quite flattened, but, like, in terms of truth, it's very, it's a flat truth instead of kind of the complexities that are real in any war or in any society.
Um, but it does seem like that all, the idea of the frame outlasting the actual story seems to be inevitable to me.
Amjad Tadros: Well, this Iran war is actually, well, how- however you wanna call it, people don't even call it war , uh-
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah, right ... [00:16:00]
Amjad Tadros: it's, it's bizarre because if you look at previous, you know, US interventions in the region, especially in 1991 when the first Iraq War, the 2003 war, there were lots of reporters on the ground, and there was a daily briefing.
And, you know, the government always said, or the army told us what was going on on the ground, and there was a lot of back and forth of, like, you know, what's going on. There were lots of journalists who were embedded with the army. With this war, we haven't seen anything. Um, you know, like, you know, the two, the st- the stories of the, the two pilots that were shot down over Iran and rescued, we don't even know their names, okay?
And some people are doubting if the whole story existed to start with. You know, uh, meanwhile, in previous American interventions, like during the war in Yugoslavia, one of the pilots was shot down and was rescued two days later. He became a hero. They made a movie about him because, you know, we knew who his name was.
And, uh- Right ... and now we hear about these things. I mean, we heard about a school that was bombed in the first days of the [00:17:00] war where 185 girls were killed or something, uh, that horrific number. We, we didn't see anything. We didn't see the, you know... I mean, you know, the... I mean, those people have mothers and the parents and sisters and...
I mean, we haven't seen anything. So, and that opens, you know, uh, the field to all sorts of different, uh, narratives and rumors and, uh, inaccuracies. And unfortunately, the truth gets lost in the middle of this whole thing.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah
Amjad Tadros: And, you know, unfortunately what I'm seeing in Iran now is a repeat of the Iraqi, uh, war, the 2003 war.
You know, claims of weapons, claims of, you know, nuclear whatever. Uh, and then, you know, uh, and then, and then America is going to fight this war, you know, for months, two months, three months, five months, and then they will leave. And what are they going to leave behind is something terrible. Terrible. That this, the region is not going to [00:18:00] be stable for years, you know?
I mean, th- this is exactly... I mean, look at Iraq. 20 years later, 23 years later, and the country is not stable. Yeah. And, and now they want to do the same thing with Iran, and Iran is way bigger than Iraq. They have three times more people than Iraq. It's sitting in a more, uh, uh, strategic place, you know, on the, uh, uh, Persian Gulf with all the oil supply as we see now going through there.
And I, there's no, and I haven't seen or heard any credible plan of what's going to happen the day after, you know?
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): No.
Amjad Tadros: And it's just, it's bizarre. Yeah. It's absolutely bizarre.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah, I mean, there's hardly a plan day to day, never mind what we're gonna do after it's over. The day after. But-
Amjad Tadros: Okay, now we finish- Yeah
and you leave, but what's going to happen, we don't know.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah.
Well, what would a fixer provide in this instance? [00:19:00] Like, what sort of truth isn't being unearthed? Like, is, is there something that you can see that the rest of us can't because we don't have an inside source into the country right now? Like, what are we missing in the coverage of Iran right now?
Amjad Tadros: You know, when I sat down to write my book, I have a, a little niece, she's like six, seven years old. She lives in New York. And she looks at me and she said, "Uncle, what is your book about?" And I looked at her and I said, "Well, I think my book is about war," because I try to describe war to people and what war does so that people can av- avoid it.
Mm. Because, you know, war is not just, you know, what you see now, just bombs falling from the sky. You know, the effects of war last for decades, you know, because after the war you're going to have injured people, maimed people, widows, orphans, you name it. I always saw myself, you know, and my colleagues who did the same thing, you know, we're sitting in the middle, and it's so frustrating.
Because, you know, I'm an Arab, I understand [00:20:00] Arab people. I was born and raised here in Jordan. Also, I'm Western-educated. I speak English. So when somebody, uh, s- speaks, you know, uh, like a foreign politician, I know what they mean, you know, what they, uh... But sometimes when it translates to Arabic, it's horrible, horrific.
Yes. And then the answer would be so bad from the other side. And if I was sitting in the middle like, "Please, can you just stop," from both sides. It is so difficult. Uh, now what we're seeing in the American media is horrific 'cause the whole media has been dismantled, you know, by the current administration.
Look at what's happening at CBS News. You know, they fired most of my colleagues, and the rest of them, I always tell them, "You are like the band on the Titanic." You know? It's- Yeah ... I mean, a hu- you know, uh, an amazing organization, and a great program like 60 Minutes. Look what's happening to it. I mean, seriously.
And now the journalists who keep working there are terrified of doing anything because they can lose their [00:21:00] jobs. You know, t- two weeks ago, they fired the London bureau chief, a very amazing journalist who's been there for years, and I know her very well, because one freelance cameraman accused her of she's, has pro-Hamas tendencies.
Imagine. She lost her job. And, uh, and who got her job? And, uh, w- uh, a, a reporter from Israel whose sister is a settler, so... On the West Bank. And, uh- Yeah ... and now you want to really see how the cover is going to be out of the CBS News office in London? Take a guess.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): But I guess I'm wondering that if you have an institution that's willing to equivocate and fire people who are still trying to do the fight and get the truth out because the administration that you're supposed to be covering and holding accountable threatens, then what does that say about the mainstream media to begin with?[00:22:00]
Amjad Tadros: I think, I hope, that, uh, the media, uh, in all its forms will survive this onslaught because the people in po- in the power will realize at some point that they need it, you know, a, an independent media to report. Because it doesn't, uh, it doesn't, uh, serve their purpose, what happened. If you look at the countries in the, in this region here, where the media has very much been controlled by the government for everything, we got to a point in the Middle East where people don't even believe the weather forecast.
And so wh- so when they hear it on the official television, they say like, "Oh, they're lying," you know, even for the weather- Yeah ... forecast. And so they have to, what they do, they have to tune to other [00:23:00] sources to see what the weather is going to be here tomorrow, and that's dangerous. That's very, very dangerous.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah,
Amjad Tadros: that's really interesting. To, to the people, to the people in power, okay?
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah.
Amjad Tadros: Because, because even if you come and control a great organization like CBS News and make it the mouthpiece of that government, the people who are pro-government themselves are not going to be listening to it Controlling the media is, is not a good idea, trust me.
You know, but you're better off- ... with independent media that is, can stand on its own, and the competition between the different channels and different networks and the different reporters is going to keep it sane.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): If you are a reporter covering the war in Iran right now, what are you, what are they missing?
What is your message to them about what they're missing, about where to find this real story? I mean, I know that, um, uh, Syrian Direct, [00:24:00] right? So you... There was no sort of system to get people inside during the Syrian conflict, and so you- Yeah ... started one. Um, you know- Yeah ... is that the sort of thing that we need to fill a gap in, in terms of from the media side of things?
Amjad Tadros: Well, yeah, if you talk about the Syrian conflict, for example, when the Syrian conflict started, you know, it was very difficult to cover it from the inside. Why? Because the regime was only handpicking journalists who were allowed to go inside Syria through the regime territories, and other regi- uh, journalists were coming from the north through Syria and Lebanon, like, you know, s- uh, working with the opposition.
At some point, when ISIS and Al-Qaeda started kidnapping jour- journalists and killing them and selling them, people were afraid to go. It became too dangerous. So we started to rely on, uh, the local, um, so-called citizen journalists, who are usually young people with mobile phones who take pictures and videos and just put them online somewhere.
The problem with those people is [00:25:00] that, uh, they come in three categories, I would say. They are either missionaries, mercenaries, or misfits, which means, you know, they are, uh, mercenaries, somebody pay them to do whatever they do. They are missionaries or somebody who has a conviction and he wants to prove it, or they are people who want to get likes and followers on social media.
And I'm not dismissing them at all. They did a very important job, but somebody back home, somebody somewhere has to get all this information and try to put it together in a more organized manner and try to balance it out, because relying on one source is difficult. With Iran now, the problem is that the internet is out, so we are not seeing that many videos coming out of Iran, and some of the videos are coming out, are coming through the opposition, which again, you put a bit, a s- a small question mark on them because they serve a certain narrative.
And, um, [00:26:00] so we don't know what's going on yet.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): You mentioned citizen journalists. Like, that is that on-the-ground stuff. I mean, all this thing, uh, all the, all the videos that we have from officer-involved shootings here in the US are all from- Oh, right ... someone filming it. Yes. And so, um, I, I think that's a, that's a good place to end up is that, yes, look to journalists, but also be your own- On the ground?
Yes. Eyes and ears. All right, great. Well, um, I know that the, the book is The Fixer, and, uh, it published in October. Where can people look you up and find the book?
Amjad Tadros: Well, the book is available on Amazon in, as an e-book or a paperback or a hardback, and they can check out my website, which is amjadtadros.com, A-M-J-A-D-T-A-D-R-O-S.
There are a lot of stories there about the book, and they can also link to the book, and there are lots of the backstories and some [00:27:00] extra material and pictures. And I hope people would read it, and maybe they would understand something and have different outlook, uh, to the region. And, uh, please, if you buy it or read it, don't forget to write a review on Amazon because that's what matters apparently.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): Yeah, apparently. Thank you for being on the show and sort of for pushing my understanding of, of how, how to look at war in the news, especially in a very complicated area. So thanks.
Amjad Tadros: Thank you very much.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (host): There's a story Amjad told early in our conversation that I keep coming back to. A producer came from New York wanting to do a story about honor killings in Jordan. He pushed back. She kept insisting. They found the man. They gave him a microphone. The story aired. Amjad said he felt terrible doing it, and then we moved on.
I've been [00:28:00] sitting with that since we recorded because I think that story contains the thing we spent the whole conversation circling without quite reaching. Not whether the system is broken. He knows it's broken. I know it's broken. That's not the gray. The gray is what it means to stay inside it anyway, to push back, lose the fight, do the story, feel terrible, and come back the next day for thirty-three years in a row.
We talked about what happens to coverage when the fixer infrastructure collapses, and there's no one left to complicate the narrative from inside the room. All of that is real and worth knowing. But the question I didn't ask clearly enough, and that I don't think has a clean answer, is what it cost, not institutionally, personally.
The sources who took risks to talk, the stories that got through wrong, the hundred and eighty-five girls who didn't make it past a number in a news cycle. Amjad is hopeful. He [00:29:00] said you can't live in the Middle East and not be. I believe him. I'm also not sure hope is the same thing as an answer. The machine is still running.
The fixer is gone, and somewhere in that gap is a question this conversation got close to but didn't finish That's usually where the real question lives.
Producer James: This podcast was made by humans, including its producer, me, James Ewing, marketing services by Jamie Kaneski, programs and partnerships by Jason Mercino, music by Chris Principe. Get Me to the Gray is an example of COJA's narrative work, designing authentic narratives and translating complex ideas for public understanding.
Learn more at [00:30:00] cojaservices.com.