Cnn's Mark Biello AP story- His nickname BTW is "Mad Do

[media]

Interesting read but AP uses the trem Film. No its called shooting or taping. News Photogs have not used film in 30 years. Mark is a great guy....


NEW YORK (AP) -- Journalism may be the only profession where
someone who helped save more than a dozen lives felt compelled to
reassure his bosses that his time was well spent.
The night after Hurricane Katrina struck, veteran CNN
photographer Mark Biello brought back vivid images of New Orleans
residents rescued from floodwaters that chased them to roofs or
attics. Some he pulled into a boat himself.
Biello isn't used to putting his camera down -- journalists are
trained to be observers, not participants. But the human misery
caused by Katrina put these instincts at war with reality, and made
many journalists rethink how to do their jobs amid calamities.
After riding out the storm in a French Quarter hotel, Biello met
CNN correspondent Jeanne Meserve at the Superdome. A distraught
city councilman drove up and said his Ninth Ward neighborhood was
submerged. The CNN team jumped in their car and followed him there.
Biello, 44, has worked for CNN since 1983 and been to 81
countries, recording famine, disaster and the bombs that flew over
Baghdad in the first Gulf War. But even he was shocked by what he
saw from a New Orleans highway overpass.
"We did not know the extent of how many people were trapped,"
he said. "Nobody did ... As far as we could see in all directions
you could hear people screaming and yelling, waving, some were
drowning."
Three men pulled up in a boat. Biello asked if he could come
along.
Their first rescue was a husband and wife plucked from a roof,
arguing with each other as they stepped onto the boat.
"I was just recording and witnessing what they were doing," he
said. "It wasn't until there were people submerged in the water
that they asked for my help in pulling people onto the boat ...
they needed the physical strength to pull people up."
They found one man, a double amputee, clutching tree branches to
keep his head above water. The rescuers had to use ropes to lift
the man onto a roof, then roll him onto the boat.
A particularly complex rescue came after nightfall. The men had
to chop through a roof to reach a couple and an older man who was
suffering a stroke, his son barely able to keep his father's head
above water. Guided through the darkness by the only light they had
-- Biello's camera battery -- they navigated back to dry land, past
the danger of submerged cars and bubbling natural gas lines.
Biello could hear screams in the dark from people he knew they
couldn't reach. He is still haunted by the memory of hands sticking
through the rafters of one house; when they floated by again, the
hands were gone.
He's convinced he did the right thing, the human thing. But
Biello still felt he had to explain to CNN management why he wasn't
spending all his time working. Those conflicting feelings are
partly why he hasn't told his story publicly until now.
CNN management has fully supported him.
"I think it's heroic and laudable and praiseworthy," said Jon
Klein, CNN/U.S. president. "I'm proud to work with a guy who would
do something like that. It's a cliche at this point, but we are
human beings first, and if you are the only thing standing between
another human being's life or death, you really don't have much of
a decision to make."
Other reporters have talked about the frustration of being on
the scene well before rescuers, and said they gave away supplies
when they could.
Strict rules about staying on the sidelines aren't always
practical, said Roger Simpson, executive director of the Dart
Center for Journalism and Trauma and a University of Washington
communications professor.
"I think (journalists) are all aware of the conflicting
agendas," Simpson said. "I think most of them figure out rather
smartly what the right thing to do is."
As they watched the Katrina drama unfold, many television
viewers angrily wondered why reporters were talking instead of
helping.
Thea McCullough, a retired nurse from Thomasville, Ga., said she
thought the TV reporters who stood on a highway overpass near the
Superdome talking about stranded hurricane victims should have
helped drive people to safety.
"They were showing people where the problem was but they had no
answers," she said. "The frustration was so infuriating. I could
see that frustration in all the reporters. But it just didn't make
any sense. You're there. Do something."
CNN's Klein said there's a difference between saving someone
whose life is in immediate danger and trying to do the jobs that
rescue workers and doctors are trained to do.
"They're not there to ferry people out, because how would you
choose who to ferry out?" he said. "If every journalist on the
scene were driving people out in their vehicles instead of
reporting the story, the rest of America -- including the president
-- would not have known what was going on."
Biello took some time off after Katrina, because days spent
wading through filthy water gave him a serious chest infection. But
he was back on the job for Hurricane Rita, standing under a highway
overpass in Lake Charles, La., to film the storm surge.
Except for being lashed by wind and rain, it was a far more
comfortable role than he was in weeks earlier.
"Journalists, we should witness these operations and events as
they happen," he said. "However, if there's no one there, and
you're caught in a situation where it's a matter of life or death
for these people, I think we have to do our part to help if we can.
Put the story aside. These people are dying."

[Jumper]

Good story, thanks for posting that.