A Reporter’s Life: Swimming in Dozens of Tapes
This morning, my desk is covered with dozens of tapes. Beta dubs of mini-DV tapes shot by photographer Christian Galdabini during the war five years ago. There’s Betacam 30s filled with interviews and b-roll from our cross-country trip last week, and digital copies of shows and feeds of other material we can use for this week’s series.
More tapes that arrived via Fed-ex today are being copied in our dub room. It’s night-vision stuff from the war: the bombing of Safwan Hill and the fire fight at “18 nothing,” when our 3rd LAR battalion drove into an ambush and returned heavy fire for a full hour — killing up to 300 enemy while suffering no major casualties. Some of that material will be featured this evening on FOX Report.
I spent all day yesterday logging tapes and roughing out scripts, and today will be more of the same. Meanwhile Harriet Taylor (my producer for this series) sits in the edit room, loading selected segments into the system so we can begin putting the first package together.
Part One of my series focuses on Major Jon Custis, who led Alpha Company across the Kuwait-Iraqi border into war. He was an iron man those first few days, leading without sleep, and I’m looking forward to telling his story.
Rick Leventhal is a correspondent in the New York bureau, but has
covered stories in more than 30 states and 20 countries, from Aruba to
Afghanistan. He has also reported from the field for dozens of World
Series games! 
You are good Rick…One hour and a half until we get to view the first of this series on Fox Report. Hope you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor with us. We do appreciate the tough work you do.
Your long time watchers and always supporters of our troops….the best of America.
A&N
Rick,
Thanks for your reporting. As an Iraqui vetern, I appreciate you going out with the troops and getting their story. We are volunteers and proud of the job that the POLITICIANS will allow us to do. If the politicians, and I mean Democrates mostly, will get out of the way and stop trying to use the soldiers and war as a way to gain support from the liberal left, we would have this taken care of in no time.
Anyways….thanks Rick for showing that the soldiers are just regular people with a knowledge that if they don’t get the job done, no one from Berkley will volunteer to do it! );
My husband was making the move into Baghdad this time last year with the 2nd Battalion Marines from Pendelton. I watched you every night back in March, April, & May of 2003 because I knew that you were with my husbands Marine unit. That is the only way that I knew where he was & what he was doing. Heck, he said the two of you enjoyed many a cup of coffee & you even gave him your Fox News cap, which he still has & probably always will. He really enjoyed your visits & still speaks very highly of you. You are doing a great job & I look forward to watching this series.
All the best!
Semper Fidelis!
Kelley Bretz
Proud wife of FMC Doc Bretz
Corpsman up!
Well said, Johnny Holder! Politicians make the job so much harder for our military. Sometimes, it seems they are the real enemy! I appreciate our military, and you Rick for showing us how it really is.