Favourite Journalists (#1)

Odd Karsten Tveit

I am starting a new series here on my favourite journalists, people whose bravery I admire but also whom I admire for their honesty and their way of recounting the news as they have experienced it and analysed it. I hope this set of essays will continue till I have run through the list of those whose books I have before me, who inspire me to report and to write.

When Ari Gautier of Melahuset (Oslo, Norway) wrote to ask me to come and visit his cultural centre, I was tempted for two reasons. First, I had never been to Norway but had been writing since 2018 almost every month for its left-wing daily, Klassekampen. I wanted to meet the team at that paper. Second, I was eager to see if I could get the chance to meet Odd Karsten Tveit. And, of course, I could talk about reporting the world, which I did with my Klassekampen colleague Yohan Shanmugaratnam.

I first heard about Odd Karsten Tveit from Robert Fisk during our gin and tonic sessions at his apartment in Beirut or when we sat at Café Younes in Hamra for a quick chat before I had to zip off to teach or to meet someone. I had been eager to ask Fisk about Sabra and Shatila, and when I did after many meetings, he told me about a guy from Norway who was so very brave and was capable of holding his passions in check so that he would get the story as accurately as possible. This guy, Odd Karsten Tveit, had come to Beirut with Norwegian broadcasting (NRK) in 1979. He had been an economist, but decided to switch to journalism in order to get close to the actuality of history and not merely write about things from a distance. Karsten remained in Beirut till 1983, but then returned twice more to the region (based in Amman, Jordan from 1990 to 1994 and then 2003 to 2007). In Pity the Nation (1990), Fisk describes Karsten as having ‘an insatiable appetite to see for himself what was happening the Lebanon war. He went to the battles’.

Reporters who ‘go to the battles’ do not go to the battlefield to see the smoke and gunfire. That tells you very little. Perhaps you can get a sense of the morale of the fighters, or you can learn about the fragility of the frontline for this or that side. But you never can learn about the politics of a war or about the brutality of the men who send the boys to die. That is often best learned in villas and in office buildings, where arms deals are conducted, and where maps are rewritten. Karsten did not go to the frontline for the adrenalin. He went to understand the ugliness of what was being done to civilian populations. That is often obscured in the military briefings, particularly when the Israeli press officers know how to dance around obliging Western reporters and when the Palestinian camps do not have the resources for a press office. The truth is spun to the benefit of the powerful. A visit to the frontline, in that case, can give you a window into reality not otherwise available. Karsten’s book, Goodbye Lebanon: Israel’s First Defeat (Limmasol, Cyprus: Rimal Books, 2013 – a translation of his Norwegian book Libanon farvel: Israel’s første nederlag, 2010) effortlessly chronicles his reporting during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its occupation of the country. You can see a clip from his reporting, where you get a sense of his style.

Meeting Karsten in Oslo was a joy. He has an infectious smile and a humbleness towards his own strengths. We spoke briefly about the impact of the reporting done by Fisk and him, as well as others, about Sabra and Shatila. He writes about that with characteristic poise:

We tried to act calmly and sensibly. I had a clear head and reported into my audio recorder. But my body reacted. I threw up all the time. I tried to count how many bodies I saw, because I knew there would be questions later about whether we were telling the truth or exaggerating. Later, I made a documentary based on video clips others made at later dates, combined with my own materials as a radio reporter. In the NRK Brennpunkt documentary Sporene etter Sharon (The traces after Sharon) you get it all.

A reporter is a person who tries to write down what presents itself, and tries to make sure that the ugliness of the world does not diminish the humanity of the writing. If a reporter falls into the mistake of using too many adjectives and too much flourish, the reporter gets in the way of the story and its reader. But the reporter can never vanish. Karsten throws up. The ugliness he sees of the Israeli produced massacre impacts him deeply. When I met him, and felt his great humaneness, I knew that this was what made him a great reporter. Great reporters are not those who get the story, but they are those who report with humanity and humility. You can break as many stories as you want, but you will never be able to present them sensibly. For that, you need humanity and humility. You need to throw up when confronted with ugliness.

(with Karsten and Ari in the Melahuset office)