[interviewer] Say your name
and what your relationship
is to Margaret Moth.
[Jeff] Oh, that's tough.
[movie projector whirring]
My name is Jeff Russi...
[camera shutter clicks]
...and Margaret
was my first girlfriend.
[camera shutter clicks]
I was 17 and she was 30.
And I ran away from home,
joined the circus.
[laughs]
[camera shutter clicks]
[interviewer] Who was
Margaret in the circus?
[camera shutter clicks]
[Jeff] She was a lion tamer.
[projector shutter clicks]
She was
the queen of the night.
[interviewer] Okay,
what character are you?
Mm...
Oh, I'm one of the clowns,
for sure.
["Barracuda" playing]
So this ain't the end
I saw you again
Today
I had to turn
My heart away
Smile like the sun
Kisses for everyone
And tales, it never fails
You lying so low
In the weeds
I bet you gonna ambush me
You'd have me down down
Down down on my knees
Now wouldn't you,
Barracuda?
Oh
[instrumental bridge playing]
Back over time
We were all
Trying for free
You met
The porpoise and me
Uh-huh
No right, no wrong
Selling a song
A name
Whisper game
And if the real thing
Don't do the trick
You better make up
Something quick
You gonna burn
Burn, burn, burn
Burn to the wick
Ooh, Barracuda
Oh, yeah
"Sell me, sell you,"
The porpoise said
Dive down deep now
To save my head
You
I think that you got
The blues, too
-[military siren beeping]
-[ambulance siren wailing]
[Stefano] So,
the first assignment
I had with Margaret
was in Baghdad.
I was a few years
into being a correspondent,
and part of me wanted out.
I was sick of it.
I was kind of heartbroken
with the cruelty,
and I got heartbroken
with innocent people
going through...
awful, awful stuff.
But Margaret didn't seem
to feel the same way.
[man shouting]
[Stefano] For better
or for worse,
w*r is an amazing feeling.
Mind blowing.
-[metal crashing]
-[shots firing]
[man] Where is everyone?
[Stefano] You've never
experienced
anything like this.
It's an emotional,
psychological,
sensory expl*si*n.
[loud expl*si*n]
Nothing compares.
[men panting]
[man] Keep going.
[woman] Like this.
[Stefano] Margaret got
a little bit excited by it.
Any such experiences
or emotions,
Margaret drank up.
[g*n shots]
She just drank 'em up.
She was fearless.
She was always cool-headed.
She had a sense
of not just a pretty pictures,
but of sort
of the reality here,
the messy,
human reality of w*r.
And she'd get
that in the shot.
[indistinct voices]
[Stefano] She was calm,
collected,
but she was on.
She was recording history.
[electro rock music playing]
Across the Gulf Coast,
you can't sing the part
company with the rain.
[electro rock music continues]
[Jeff] I was
a straight 'A' student
and sold weed
at Westbury High School,
the highest academic
school in Houston.
I did work
at the Pizza Restaurant.
That was like 25 feet
away from her front door.
This guy named John,
he came down and asked around.
He said, "Is anybody selling
acid or weed or whatever."
And they pointed
to me, you know.
So, ran upstairs...
Walk in,
it's a tiny little space.
And there was peacock
feathers and old paintings
and antique
furniture, Danish oak.
And she's sitting at
the table,
and she's smoking a pipe.
And that was the first time
I met Margaret Moth.
She was so exotic.
I thought she was
a gypsy fortune teller.
She said
she was from New Zealand.
You know, if you'd asked me
where New Zealand was,
and then spun the globe,
there was no way.
Like, I had no idea
where New Zealand was.
I didn't even know it was
off the coast of Australia.
She was the first camera woman
for Television New Zealand.
I mean, she was just
too cool for me.
That's for sure.
I was so geeky,
tripping over my shoe strings
and making straight 'A's.
And I had no idea that anybody
would have thought
I was attractive or anything.
And then she started spinning
this weird tale all that.
Now, I was
this really cute guy.
We got together
in the summer
between
my 11th and 12th grade,
your last year of high school.
I never went to 12th grade.
[camera shutter clicking]
I forgot
that it was even happening.
As soon as I started
hanging out with Margaret,
things changed.
Partied our asses off.
I mean, it turned
my life upside down.
I mean, I was one of
the coolest kids in town then.
It was weird.
I just started
staying in her house.
I remember
her giving me a drawer.
Such a big day, you know.
She was an alien to me.
And the alien said,
"Hey, want to do some acid?"
[laughs]
[upbeat music playing]
We did acid every weekend.
We were always tripping.
Margaret was
an experienced traveller.
She got out there.
She went a long way out.
She was like,
[in monotone] "I don't know
how we're going
to get back to Earth."
[punk rock music playing]
Skating was huge for us.
So there was a big group
of skaters in Houston called
The Urban Animals.
They were into
different drugs. [chuckles]
They were the heroin crowd.
And we were speed crowd.
[punk rock music playing]
Friday we would
go to the punk club.
The one punk club in town
in Houston, Texas,
called The Island.
[plane propeller whirring]
And then on a Saturday
morning,
we'd get up and go skydiving.
[Margaret on screen] My father
had photographs
of paratroopers
during the w*r.
But I never realized then
that civilians could jump.
And it was my big ambition
when I was a kid,
to be a paratrooper.
[Jeff] If somebody got boring,
they're gone, for sure.
[Margaret] So
it doesn't matter
how close
it comes to this and jumping.
It just never seems bad
when you're actually doing it.
Today, I'm just going
to be having a lot of fun.
[chuckles]
[Jeff] To Margaret,
you know, that's right.
If they were
with the Ten Commandments,
"Don't be boring."
She had a good time
and she took everybody
along with her.
You know,
nothing was out of bounds.
I mean,
we had an open relationship
from the very beginning.
[music stops]
She just had a network of guys
that she dealt with.
She played the field.
But I never doubted for
a minute
that she wasn't in
love with me
or that I wasn't
in love with her.
[news jingle plays]
[man over TV] K-H-O-U-T-V,
Houston.
[Joe] Back in 1984,
I was interned
by K-H-O-U in Houston, Texas.
And, one afternoon,
I was sitting at the desk
and I looked across
the newsroom,
and this woman with spiky
jet black hair walked in,
and it just totally
caught my attention.
She became my good friend,
and we started going' out
and partying quite a bit.
[rock and roll music playing]
She looked
so rock and roll 24-7.
She was always,
you know,
Joan Jett's big sister.
[on TV] Pilots
for Eastern Airlines
write up a new contract,
but they aren't looking...
[Joe] She was working in
what they call
the Southwest Bureau.
So it was a lot of politics.
She wasn't interested
in politics.
She wasn't interested
in sh**ting politician
holding a news conference.
Margaret preferred to go out
on a hurricane
and chase a hurricane.
That was the kind of
assignment Margaret wanted.
[man yelling]
That's the kind of assignment
that she volunteered for.
She wanted to be
where the sh*t was happening.
And in her mind, that place
was behind a news camera.
[camera shutter clicks]
You know, she's got a bazooka
on her shoulder.
[camera shutter clicks]
You better watch out.
[on TV] Now, Dan's going
to have complete report
on that, a little later
in the program...
[Joe] I mean,
this is Houston, Texas.
I mean, they were
like, you know,
right-wing, Republican
conservatives, you know,
a female cameraman
in a male-dominated world.
That definitely
gave her a charge.
She did what she wanted.
She dressed
the way she wanted.
She said whatever she wanted,
and it was something
that people were in awe of.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Jeff] I was fascinated.
How could this person
be so different?
I'd ask her things
about her past
and she said,
"I don't remember."
You know, "What about your
family?
What about your dad?"
"I don't remember."
And that just added
to her mystique to me.
[mysterious music playing]
The only thing she ever
told me about herself
was that she had had
to go to court
to get her tubes tied...
to get herself sterilized.
She said, "I'm not a breeder.
I want nothing
to do with that."
Her only motto was,
"No regrets."
She didn't look back.
[man on TV] In 1980,
CNN revolutionized
the way
the world watches news.
[on TV] 7 This news service
will be called
The Cable News Network
and will
program 24 hours a day.
[Stefano] CNN was the sh*t
right then.
I mean, it was the sh*t.
[man on TV] For the moment,
the iron fist
of
the People's Liberation Army
has come down
on Tiananmen Square
in the heart of Beijing.
[Stefano] You know,
they had an impact.
[Tom] By showing the world
the impact of w*r,
our world was better informed.
This was a new era.
[Tom] Women were emerging as
strong, strong professionals
in the field of
photojournalism.
And there was
a kick-a*s spirit to Margaret.
And Margaret was always
looking for an opportunity.
They picked her up.
She was just
a perfect candidate.
When she got the job with CNN
and she said she was going
to work at the Dallas bureau,
it was like, "Ah, f*ck."
[laughs]
So I just assumed
I would move to Dallas.
You know, I'd visit,
but she didn't ever want me,
to like, move there.
When Margaret and I met,
I was writing songs.
I mean,
I had this little notebook
of songs that I took
everywhere I went.
And I'm certainly writing
songs for her.
First love of my life.
I handed her my book one time,
and I said, you know,
"What do you think?"
She just, like, flat out said,
"It sounds
kind of trite to me."
I mean, that was a shock.
And I didn't write another
word as a lyric for years.
[on TV] I'm Lou Waters. Hello.
The world is in the midst
of a tense waiting game,
waiting to find out
if and when there will be w*r
in the Persian Gulf.
[techno music playing]
[Schwarzkopf] So far,
defensive is progressing
with dramatic success.
The troops are doing
a great job.
[man on TV] I can hear
the sound of planes...
[Jeff] Her first w*r
was Desert Storm.
[man on TV] More than
one billion heavily armed men
sent to confront one another
in the Gulf.
[tense music playing]
[man on TV] We
have been watching
an incredible display
of anti-aircraft firing.
[Jeff] She got on so well
with military people,
because she was so ballsy.
General Schwarzkopf
took a liking to her,
and they smoked cigars
in the evening.
And she was there
in the w*r zone.
That's where she felt
the most comfortable.
I think that's where she knew
she was who she was.
At a certain point,
sex, drugs, and rock and roll
just wasn't enough.
w*r was the ultimate drug.
Desert Storm was
where she made it.
Her dream had come true.
Yes, one, two, three,
four, five, you hear me.
People were quite intimidated
by Margaret Moth.
Even I was.
Christiane Amanpour,
CNN, Sarajevo.
You know, in Sarajevo, she
used to sleep with her boots
and her black
combat trousers on.
You know,
I'm like, "Margaret..."
and she's, "Oh, no,
I've got to be ready."
Margaret had a wish to show
the story as she saw it
in the raw.
[man on TV] A community,
united in grief...
[Susan] She was
a very serious camerawoman.
[Stefano] She liked
to get in tight.
When she went in,
she went in tight.
[Susan] Margaret
was very switched on.
She was like a whole package.
Uncompromising.
That's what I liked.
Didn't faff around.
Didn't suck up to people.
And was very good
at what she did.
She had a natural, physical,
and mental fortitude
that needed to
find expression.
And in danger,
going into w*r zones.
[Joe] The way she could just
not sleep for days
and also she could
go without food,
it wasn't normal for a person
to have that kind of
endurance.
And I remember
looking at her, like,
"Don't you ever get tired?"
She's like, "No."
[scoffs]
It made her perfect
for covering w*r.
Margaret never made
anything about being a female.
She just did it.
You know,
she'd get comments and things,
but I mean, she just...
[scoffs]
"Look at me.
Here's the camera."
"This is what I do." You know.
[man on TV] Three
Iraqi soldiers today
were captured at a roadblock,
manned by the Kuwaiti
resistance.
We didn't have things like
Instagram and social media
and, you know, iPhones.
What was happening
that particular day
caused us to
follow that story.
[Sausan] You always wanted
somebody like Margaret
with you in the field.
Her camera
is an extension for herself.
So she's drawn to the story,
through the camera,
and she just follows it.
[Stefano] As a journalist,
I had this romantic notion
that we're supposed to make
this a better place.
We're supposed to bring up
the good in every person
and all that.
She was more cynical.
And I think for her,
the photographs, the image,
the video she captured
was shoved in your face.
"Here it is."
And she had no more trouble
with it than that.
It was like,
"Here it is. Take it."
"This is your sh*t."
[ominous music playing]
[Jeff] Maybe it's not
the best metaphor
that Margaret's camera
was a g*n.
It's more like a spotlight.
She was shedding light
on people behaving badly.
[indistinct talking]
The most valuable thing
that she can imagine
was being where
history is being changed.
But I could never
follow her there.
[indistinct voices]
[woman on TV] The BBC
is reporting
that Iraq has fired
five Scud missiles
at Saudi Arabia.
The Pentagon is now confirming
12 dead and 25 injured.
[ambulance siren wailing]
[b*mb explosions]
[Yaschinka]
[laughs]
[in French]
Well.
[man on TV] We have
an air raid alert
people are being taken
to shelters.
[Yaschinka]
[blows raspberries]
[laughs]
[President George Bush]
Kuwait is liberated.
Iraq's army is defeated.
Our military
objectives are met.
[Yaschinka]
[camera shutter clicking]
[laughs]
[laughs]
Yaschinka was just there.
He wasn't a part
of the long-term plan.
He wasn't a part
of her life, you know?
When she came back to Houston,
we did everything together.
They had nothing like we had.
I just knew
he was a heroin addict.
I said, "Wow, I mean... you're
going out with a heroin a...
Don't they just go to sleep
and not want to have
sex and all that?"
And she said, "No,
it's quite the opposite."
[chuckles softly]
So, when he would visit her
in Dallas
and they'd go,
score some heroin
and f*ck all night. [laughs]
So it was like,
speed was for us, you know.
So she enjoyed that.
It is different after that.
She was different.
[helicopter blades whirring]
She definitely wanted
to be where people
were doing something wrong...
Where she had a purpose.
CNN was just a different drug.
[helicopter blades whirring]
[ominous music playing]
Depending on
your personality makeup,
you may want to brag
about w*r and call it...
it's... it's intoxicating.
If you're like me,
you don't want to glorify it
'Cause it's just awful.
It is awful.
But that said,
your experience of it
is an incredibly complex
concoction
of adrenaline,
this and that
and upset and surge.
And so you could be upset
and excited at the same time.
So, while
I hate to glorify it,
you also...
It was kind of a rush.
[camera shutter clicking]
w*r is a tough job.
And we self-medicate it.
This is life and death.
[Yaschinka]
If you talk to veterans, too,
there were soldiers, they'll
tell you the same thing.
You come
back to civilian life...
and it's kind of lonely
because nobody
will understand your stories,
the strange serotonin
chemical level,
adrenaline, all this stuff.
Of course, you're trying
to tell that story
of that experience
and they think
you're telling a glory story
and you're not.
And it's very lonely.
[Yaschinka]
[laughs]
[techno music playing]
[man on TV] On the streets
of Gagra,
the Ossetian battle
for independence goes on.
[Stefano] Desert storm
has just ended.
The Soviet Union was over.
There was a civil w*r
in the former
Soviet Republic of Georgia.
And the g*nman,
the militiamen,
for the new government
that was trying to take over,
open fire on the crowd.
When the firing started,
the other cameraman
ducked behind the cars,
and trying to wait to see
what shots they can get.
And one cameraman, later on,
back at the hotel, said to me,
"I'm hiding behind the car
to get out of the g*nf*re.
And I suddenly see a shadow
across my arms,
and I think, 'what the hell,'
I look up....
And there's Margaret,
standing straight upright,
not hiding behind the
vehicles, filming the action."
[crowd uproar]
[Stefano] She got
the only pictures,
she's filming people
going down as they get hit.
The other cameraman people
were kind of startled
that she had the guts
to just say, "Uh-oh."
and step right out
in the middle of it.
[Jeff] She took huge chances
with her life.
She came across somebody
that was a bully.
[Margaret] Who are you?
Who are you?
[Jeff] She just took him down,
and she did it
because she had to.
She just became fearless.
[interviewer] And do you
ever dream
that anything could go wrong?
[Jeff] No. No, I thought
she was the indestructible.
[indistinct noise]
[Stefano] I remember
driving around Baghdad.
We stopped
at the marketplace, a souk,
and it was big and it was...
there were stalls
and this and oranges
and cucumbers and...
Margaret got out of the car.
There are all these kids
and they're all coming up
and looking at Margaret and
laughing and like, "h*, h*!"
she sees so...
She's so wild to them.
And the kids are all
crowding into the shot,
trying to get into the shot.
Like 30, 40,
50 are crowding in.
And I've never seen a human
crowd act like gasoline.
It's just like a... [imitates
expl*si*n] spreading.
All of a sudden,
out of the crowd
emerges some plain clothesmen,
and he wants to put
a stop to it.
He stupidly goes up to...
[chuckles]
front and front of Margaret
and he pushes the camera away,
and it bangs her on the nose.
Her viewfinder bangs
on the nose.
She stands up and in front
of hundreds of people
in S*ddam's Iraq,
in S*ddam's city,
she goes, "Don't you ever...".
[slaps loudly]
I never... [sighs]
fully understood what
was ticking inside of her.
But I always felt that,
my God, you know,
there's a deep anger
in there somewhere.
I mean, you could sense
that behind all of that,
it came from a place
of anger and defiance.
You, know,
when something sparked
that kind of behaviour,
it did make me wonder
why she would be,
you know, such a...
such a change in character?
[Jeff] Sometimes
she would come home,
and she would've
encountered, like,
what we call trigger episodes,
where she would... cry
pretty spontaneously
and non-stop for hours.
That was terrifying.
You know, I had this, like,
person you care about
that you've been around with
and had so much intimacy with,
You know, tears flowing,
and she can't even bring
herself
to tell me one thing
about it.
What the f*ck?
When you're looking back,
I can figure things out.
I can put things
together over the years,
but back then, it was
a total f*cking mystery.
[Yaschinka]
There was something
that she just didn't like
about family
traditional settings,
and there were times when
we would have Christmas dinner
and it was, you know, friends.
But Margaret preferred
not to have kids around.
[Jeff] Margaret's rocket fuel
was anger.
You never stopped sensing
that somewhere in there,
something was propelling her
like a bat out of hell,
out of her own past,
her own childhood.
We were hanging out,
you know, in Houston
and we're just, like, doing
what we do around the table.
I'd be playing my bass
and she's started to draw...
[sombre music playing]
I mean,
there's a nightmare for you.
Who'd draw stuff
like that, you know?
[melancholic music playing]
It's come straight
out of her childhood.
You know, she was
a terrified little girl
asking somebody
not to hurt her.
But to me,
the most significant thing
in those sketches
was that she drew herself
with the black hair
and the dark eyes
when she was a child.
Like, that she thought
of herself that way,
that long ago.
She was actively
rewriting her story
while that trauma was
still being visited on her.
Margaret Moth was a character.
Moth is not her last name.
Her last name is Wilson.
She had invented
the entire thing
a long time ago.
She was a little
blonde-haired,
blue-eyed,12-year-old
when she conceived
of that look.
Why she rejected her
blonde, blue-eyed self?
It was a mystery.
[Jan] We were never
a close family.
We were never told
that we were loved, ever,
by either parent.
We never knew whether dad
was gonna come home sober
or come home
at all, half the time.
And six o'clock, we'd hear
the car come up the driveway
and all our little faces
would turned towards the door
as he walked in and you
could...
you could just
feel the tension.
[Ross] It was quite scary.
But Mum was probably
more violent
- than what Dad was. [chuckles]
-[Jan] Yes.
When she lost it,
her eyes... [chuckles]
her eyes would go black
like a demon.
[Jan] I remember Margaret
saying about that,
you know,
"Beware of Mum's eyes."
-"They will go black."
-Yeah.
It was pretty violent
discipline in those days.
It was either a hairbrush
or a coat hanger
or a razor strop or a belt.
[laughs sadly]
It used to wrap
right around her hand.
Hold her hand out and it
would wrap right round.
with a buckle.
She said, "If the pill had
been around in those days...
none of youse
would've been here."
[laughs]
[Jeff] Margaret started
shredding the ties that bind
at a very young age.
[sombre music playing]
[Yaschinka in French]
[laughs]
[sombre music playing]
[machine g*ns firing]
[firing continues]
The first time I met
and worked with Margaret
was in Sarajevo
in June and July of 1992.
[man on TV] The people
of Sarajevo
have been under siege
for almost eight months.
They have very little food,
no electricity
and almost no water.
[loud thud]
[Christiane] This,
at the time,
was the worst w*r in Europe
since the end of World w*r II.
It's w*r against civilians.
It's a w*r crime.
And that's what Margaret's
pictures started to record.
[man 2 on TV] sn*pers hidden
in these buildings,
which the Serbs control,
k*ll or wound people
almost every day.
-[g*nshots]
-[man 2 on TV] sn*per Alley,
the most dangerous road
in Sarajevo.
[g*nf*re]
[Christiane on TV] Even
when the big g*ns go quiet,
the sn*pers never quit.
Barely a minute goes by
without sn*pers firing
a terrified resident.
You know, the captors
or the aggressors
could see the victims.
They could see them
through their sights,
because they were just a few
hundred yards over there.
And they actually, physically,
took aim at children...
[g*n shots fire]
running, trying to cross
a road,
you know,
behind containers.
[loud g*nsh*t]
And the world
still would not intervene.
[man on TV] Sarajevo's
latest casualty.
He was seven-years-old.
His sister screamed,
"Is my brother alive?"
His mother didn't know
the answer.
She too had been hit.
[loud expl*si*n]
[Christiane] We came under
mortar fire and attack.
[loud g*nf*re]
Margaret was out sh**ting.
Finally, she came back in
when she got all the pictures.
But it was really scary.
And I remember
saying to my producer,
and then
afterwards to Margaret,
"I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I brought you here.
I promise, if we survive,
we'll never do this again.
We'll never put
you in danger again.
I'll never, ever risk
our lives again."
And the very next day, we did.
[Peter] In the early days
in Sarajevo,
there was very
little protective gear.
There were some flag jackets,
but nobody was wearing
helmets at that time.
You relied on the fact
that you had a press pass,
and your car had "TV."
It was the first time
that jounalists
were deliberately
picked on by sn*pers.
[g*nsh*t]
We were plenty-pissed
that the sn*per shot at us.
The first time I went out
there, I was really afraid.
I was sitting on the aeroplane
going into, um, Zagreb.
[chuckles] And I thought...
[chuckles]
"Oh, my
God! Say, I lose a leg?
What if I lose a leg?"
I kept thinking I was
gonna lose a leg, not my life,
just, "What am I gonna do?"
You know.
Um, and I think
that's one of the things
that some of us
have said in the past.
If you admit
that you are frightened,
somehow,
you're more concentrated.
Because,
if you're too gung-h*,
you're not really
concentrating
in the right way.
[g*nsh*t]
[Christiane] I remember
telling Margaret
who'd been there
at least two weeks
longer than I had,
that she should leave as well,
because there's only so much
Russian roulette you can play.
[g*nshots]
When we first went out there,
I met up with Martin Bell
and he showed me
a white Carlton Estate
with no windows.
He said,
"This is the camera car."
"Yeah, great.
Where is the camera car?"
"No, no,
this is the camera car."
So, I mean, we're
all in soft-skin vehicles.
Oh, we sometimes had
"Press" written on the side.
[car engine revving]
But we would
also go in convoys.
I think that gives you
a certain strength,
the feeling that, you know,
we're together in this.
[Stefano] Well, one day
we're driving around town.
The road was clear,
we drove down into the city
to the Holiday Inn, the hotel
we were all staying at.
Now, you have to understand,
the Holiday Inn
was not your Holiday Inn.
[chuckles]
It was not your average hotel.
[g*nf*re]
There's a lot of g*nf*re
happening around the area.
[g*nf*re]
It was obviously a very
nice hotel before the w*r,
but it had been struck
again and again.
[g*nsh*t]
[loud expl*si*n]
It was sort of sodden
and destroyed and pock-marked.
You have to understand
that w*r is...
does peculiar things
to the things that you behold,
order and normalcy
that has been shattered.
[ominous music playing]
[Susan] There is something
poetic about roads
that have no traffic on.
There's just us.
[Stefano] I remember it
like a nightmare,
but at least in the nightmare
you can flail,
you can panic,
and you can wake up.
That day was something
you couldn't escape from.
[mysterious music playing]
We have our armed vests on.
You have the big long avenue.
And before,
there were nice shrubs
growing down the middle,
they've all been
crushed and dried.
[tense music builds]
The trees were flowering.
Now they've got chips,
aggressive chips
and bark missing and scoured.
The trees have been scoured
and branches
have turned into splinters.
The leaves are all gone.
The trolley lines...
are now snaking
across the ground.
[Susan] They're with these
metal kind of crosses,
great big metal crosses,
like roadblocks.
So you'd have to go round,
which makes it harder
to... to be a target.
[Stefano] You drive
any damn way you want.
There's no rules.
We just squirve left into...
like, in the movies,
you go [imitates thumping]
over the trolley lines.
It's Mad Max.
Margaret and Mark are seated
in the back of the van.
I'm seated
in the front passenger seat.
They're saying, "Well,
here's this, here's that,"
and I'm looking, and there's
the apartment buildings there,
and I'm looking left and
right, and all of a sudden...
-[imitates machine g*n firing]
-[machine g*n firing]
[glass shattering]
[Susan] I saw
some, like, flash.
[Stefano] I just felt
a mist of glass.
I didn't know whether it'd
gone over mine or something.
I didn't know
what had happened.
I didn't know
if it was a g*n or whatever.
It was just like a loud crack.
It's almost like, you know,
you're touching the static
and it goes into it.
It is just that...
[imitates frizzing]
I laughed. I laughed.
And I'm leaning forward now.
I'm hunched down
and I grabbed my helmet
and I put it on my head,
unaware, that behind me,
Margaret's been shot.
Our driver spins the car
around and he starts driving.
You know, we're racing,
I look forward again,
and the next time I look back,
she slumped over this way,
on Mark's shoulder.
He's wearing a white shirt,
and she's starting to go,
[imitates choking]
because she's...
blood is draining
in down her throat.
Her eyes, with her mascara.
Her eyes are like,
diamond sharp light.
We race into town, careening
over the trolley lines
and pull up
in front of the hospital.
And I'm screaming,
"You gotta help, she can't
breathe, you got to help her."
But I don't see
that her jaw is gone.
I think she's holding
it in place, still.
[CNN news opening music]
CNN's Stefan Kutsonis
was with Moth and Delmage
during the sh**ting,
and he joins us now
from Sarajevo by phone
with an update
on the situation.
We want to warn you
that he has graphic details
of this attack.
Stefan, bring us up to date.
[Stefano on TV] Hello.
First of all,
I'd like to say that
Margaret is still in
surgery right now,
and the doctors have now said
that it's not guaranteed
that she will survive this.
The severe injuries
to her head and throat
are like, very serious.
Uh, even if
she does survive it,
her life will be very
different from now on.
I was so overwhelmed.
You know, I was brimming,
exploding with emotion
and stress and fear.
I still at this point had
blood
all over my pants
and shoes,
and I didn't know
what was coming next.
I was told
she may not survive.
[woman on TV] She was rushed
to Sarajevo's main hospital
where doctors spent four hours
patching-up her shattered jaw.
She needed a tracheotomy
so she could breathe.
All of this part is gone.
And this part has swollen
out like a watermelon.
I remember seeing
all of her upper molars,
you know how each molar
has four little
points on it, sort of?
The shockwave it had--
It just
shattered these molars.
They were now splinters.
I got a call from my bosses
that Margaret had been shot.
And at first I thought,
"My God, don't tell
me she's been k*lled."
"No, she hasn't been k*lled,
but she's been very,
very badly injured,
and she was sniped."
And I knew exactly
what had happened,
because we had been sniped
for weeks.
[Susan] Everybody was
in a state of shock.
And I remember talking
to a medic and I said,
"How is Margaret?
So, she's been airlifted?"
He said, "But you know, pfft,
probably best if she died."
I said, "What?"
He said, "Yeah, you know,
with those injuries,
I mean, really,
would you wanna
have those injuries
to your face?"
[Christiane] They gave her
a blood transfusion.
She was airlifted out to
the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
And I didn't know
what I was going to find
when I got to the hospital.
She was unrecognizable.
And at the time,
she couldn't talk,
but she could do some writing.
I went in and
she looked at me.
And I'll never forget,
it was...
this look in her,
you know, big blue eyes.
and she was...
started crying
and kicking her legs,
trying to talk to me, like,
"Look, what's happened to me."
And I was trying to calm
her down and it was really...
...tough.
It was a very tough moment.
[Jeff] I work at Kinkos,
they put me on a register
in the front.
These two guys
were getting their coffees,
you know, getting their money
out and whatever,
this guy said
to the other guy,
he said, "Did you hear
about Margaret Moth?"
And he said, "Yes,
she got shot in Sarajevo."
"It blew her jaw right off."
"She's not gonna make it."
That's how I heard
about it... from strangers.
I was really angry
from that point forward.
I was livid.
My Margaret died
on sn*per Alley.
She didn't come back.
[sombre music playing]
[Yaschinka]
[melancholic music playing]
Yeah, mum rang and told me
that she'd been shot
in the face by a sn*per.
Yeah.
Well, you're sort of like...
until I saw her,
I didn't realize the extent.
Mm.
Yeah, she was very vain.
And my first thought
when she got shot was,
"Oh, my God, for that to
happen to Maggie's face...
was incredible."
[Yaschinka]
[Joe] They started putting
her face together.
And they had
to rebuild her jaw
because the jaw
had been blown off.
She had lost all her teeth,
and it was always
as typical Margaret,
that she would say,
"I want to go back to Sarajevo
and look for my teeth."
[loud g*nsh*t]
[dark music]
[Jan] The French guy?
Mum said
that she didn't like him.
Maggie always
had younger boyfriends.
You know, they'd be all
lovely-dovey on phone,
and I couldn't believe her.
I never heard Maggie talk like
that to anybody, you know?
So, yeah, it was strange.
She's laying there bandaged
and was supposed to be
all sterile and everything.
And he's climbing
all over the top of her
and kissing
her and cuddling her
and rubbing his
hands all over her,
yeah, but Mum wasn't
impressed at all.
Mum didn't like it
because she reckoned
he was selling stuff
out of Margaret's flat
while she was in hospital.
Stealing
it and then selling it.
Finally, she found out
that he was a heroin addict.
Maggie had the money
and he didn't.
So, maybe it was
that sort of relationship.
She... she nurtured him
and he was happy
to go along with it.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Yaschinka]
[Jeff] Well, at this point,
we had been apart for so long,
very, very little contact.
I was too ashamed
to talk to her,
because my life had just
revolved around
drinking and drugs,
and I just couldn't...
deal with it.
Couple of times
she sent me a ticket,
and I couldn't stay sober
long enough
to get on an airplane.
All I could see
was what I had lost,
you know,
not what she had lost.
I disappointed her a lot.
I rejected her
on almost every level.
[thunderous rumbling]
[techno music playing]
[Yaschinka]
[scoffs]
[Joe] Before she was shot,
people would stare
because she was so beautiful,
and with these
long flowing skirts.
But after she was shot,
her mouth was crooked and
she lost part of her tongue.
She didn't have teeth,
and you don't have teeth,
you can't eat properly,
you can't speak properly.
[Yaschinka]
[Joe] People would stare.
[Yaschinka]
[Jeff] The sn*per
on sn*per Alley
wasn't gonna bring her down.
She was better than that.
[dramatic music playing]
She went into a little capsule
and, you know,
like a cocoon,
and came out something other.
I think for Margaret,
anything else but
radical acceptance
would have been defeat.
[intense music]
[Stefano] At some point,
Margaret realized
she needed to fight
tooth and nail to get back.
My God, the inner physical
strength of that woman.
[physiotherapist] And back,
all the way.
Let's go
down to the bed first.
[Stefano] She had the guts
to just say,
[determined tone] "Don't
strip me of my pride."
[physiotherapist] Can
you reach your hand
to the headboard?
[Doctor Paul] Okay, open
as wide as you can for me.
I know
you can't open it very wide.
I'm just trying
to look and see
if you have any sutures
that I can see.
Can you feel your lower lip
any better now?
[Margaret] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can feel it right over here.
[Doctor Paul] Very good. Good.
I feel pressure.
I never saw her spirit flag.
I never saw her
feel sorry for herself.
I never saw her say, "No,"
to any challenge.
Well, she was very keen
to return to work
as soon as possible.
[demonstrators chanting]
[Peter] The international desk
had recommended
that she take it easy
in terms of assignments.
She did her share
of the various stories
that we were doing in Paris.
How romantic, okay, excuse me.
Her mental state was,
you know, "I'm going to go
back to work."
[indistinct voice]
[Joe] But it was not easy
to go back to work.
[male journalist] Ah!
These two ladies here.
[Joe] She was weak.
She had been fed through
a tube into her stomach
because she couldn't eat
and she had lost weight.
Margaret wanted to do
what she loved to do,
and that was covering w*r.
Three, two, one.
The union say,
"Thursday's action
is just a warning."
[Peter] She did complain
about the fact
that myself
and the assignments editor
were deliberately plotting
to keep her away
from what she considered
to be the essential stories
of the day
and she felt hard done by.
One of the things
that stood out
for the rest of us in
the Bureau, of course,
was the fact that Margaret
found it very difficult
to talk.
Down here was still
her physical strength
because she would
still lift the cameras.
There was no
slowing down of that.
But it was very hard for her
to work with you
when she didn't have a tongue
to communicate properly.
[slurred speech]
She would talk and it was,
just drool was coming out.
She always had
to dab her mouth.
She couldn't control
the drool, right?
She'd say, "Oh, I--"
And you'd say,
"I'm sorry, what?"
She'd either say
it again more slowly,
so you can get it, or she
would nod,
do this and pull
out her...
her reporter's pad
and write it down
like that and say,
"Do you want this?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure."
"Let's do that then."
Nobody else had to work for
her because of her infirmity.
But she had to work harder.
Yeah, yeah, a bit. Um...
[chuckles]
[Tom] She wanted to be
on the front line.
She said,
"I am going back to w*r."
"And nobody is going to stand
in my way."
[Peter] The indication
from the assignments editor
on the international desk
was to try and avoid
sending Margaret to
situations where she
where she would be
more at risk
because of the lack
of medical facilities
or the danger.
I mean, if she was
to get hurt again, I mean,
if she were hit in the face
by a rock or something...
There were people who
came to me,
and said "Tom,
you can't let her do it.
You cannot let her do it.
You'll have blood
on your hands."
But Margaret didn't see it
quite the same way.
Look, I have a black
b*llet-proof vest.
[man] Cool.
[Peter] She was so all in.
[Margaret giggles]
[Peter] She had
only one way forward,
and that was to walk
straight back
into the lion's den.
[upbeat music playing]
CNN, Cyangugu, Rwanda.
[continual g*nshots]
[indistinct voices]
Margaret liked being near...
near the action.
So she didn't want
to be in headquarters,
or she didn't want
to be in place
there was a little action.
[expl*si*n]
[Jeff] Even with her injuries,
she was driven
by some other fuel source
than most people are.
[military siren beeps]
[Stefano] Margaret and
the crew are in the West Bank.
And an IDF,
Israeli Defence Force
armoured Jeep pulls up.
[metal banging]
The Israeli soldiers
fire some kind of tear gas
or other grenade or something.
So they're aiming at
right at these
journalists, right?
[g*nsh*t]
Then they ram the front
of CNN's Land Rover.
-[imitates banging]
-[metal clashing]
[horns blaring]
-[loud expl*si*n]
-[woman screams]
[Margaret]
[indistinct audio
over megaphone]
As you can hear Margaret
say in that piece, she says,
"Who got me in the foot?"
Then you see a guy
steps out and goes,
pow, he fires point blank
at the glass.
-[glass shattering]
-[honking continues]
She didn't do less w*r
after she got shot.
She did more.
She doubled down on danger.
[Stefano] She stuck
with danger.
She stuck with people
who understood danger
and understood
the price she had paid.
Dignity and defiance.
The ceaseless defiance
of everything.
Even defiance
against her own self-pity.
I think that was the way
for Margaret
to preserve her dignity.
There's this one big, thorny,
difficult story in the world.
It's kind of special.
And that's the story
of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It's a minefield of a story.
[man on TV] Sixteen
Katyusha rockets
slammed into villages
in northern Israel
as many residents
were eating breakfast.
[speaking Hebrew]
Hezbollah in south Lebanon
had been shelling
and sending Katyusha rockets
over into settlements
in northern Israel.
And the Israelis
had wanted to retaliate,
and they issued a warning
that they were gonna be
attacking Shiite villages
where they believed Hezbollah
to have its strongholds,
and warned
that anything that moved,
would be considered
a legitimate target.
About 300 to 400 thousand
civilians fled from the south
of Lebanon, towards Beirut.
[man on TV] Two
thunder-clapping explosions
had sounded across
the city and then screams.
[people scream chaotically]
[Peter] CNN mobilized
around 12 journalists.
There was also
the addition of Margaret
and another sound tech
that came in from London.
And we moved south
along the coastal road
from Beirut to Tyre.
[man on TV] Israel is trying
to stop Hezbollah
and journalists
traveling this road.
Anyone moving
has to make a high-speed dash.
[ominous music playing]
[Yaschinka]
[bombs exploding]
[Peter]
We were the only network
that set up a base in Tyre.
[expl*si*n]
On the top floor,
of a 12 story apartment block,
and we've had
a grandstand view...
-[jets zooming]
-[b*mb exploding]
of the Israeli air attacks.
[loud expl*si*n]
Margaret's on the roof
and she captured
the expl*si*n very close by.
You can see the jets,
the F-14s and the F-16s
come over
and quite clearly
see them drop bombs.
[Stefano] Look,
there is no way around it.
This was an extraordinarily
dangerous place.
But this is where
Margaret wanted to be.
[people talking indistinctly]
[Peter] One of the stories
that we did
in the first few days
was to visit
the United Nations troops.
It was mainly Fijians at the
time.
And we visited
one of their camps near Kana.
More or less
on the front lines.
We went to the camp
a couple of times
to do some
interviews.
[indistinct chatter]
Some of the locals were scared
of Israeli retaliation,
so they asked the UN,
"You know, can we stay
here?"
"The Israelis aren't going
to attack you, are they?"
Margaret was off filming
when she heard
that there had been an attack.
[man over radio] Fiji
battalion headquarters
is still under shelling.
Fiji battalion headquarters
is still under shelling. Over.
[Peter] And so, she went
of her own initiative,
straight to Kana,
back to the camp.
[woman screaming, crying]
[tense music playing]
[chaotic screaming]
[Peter] Margaret was the first
television journalist
with a proper
professional camera
to arrive on the scene.
She filmed the whole
immediate aftermath.
And then we waited for
Margaret to come back
with all the video.
And she had shot a good 30,
maybe more, 40 minutes.
We fed everything to Atlanta,
whole 40 minutes.
I'm Lou Waters. Hello.
Here's what's happening.
It's been quite a day.
It was a scene that caused
United Nations' peacekeepers
and rescue officials to weep.
[man on TV] It's reported
that two Israeli shells
out of a salvo
of as many as five,
impacted inside the base,
some six miles
south-east of Tyre,
cutting down at least
200 Lebanese civilians.
In the words
of the United Nations
on the ground,
"It was a m*ssacre."
[Peter] The impact
of Margaret's footages
cannot be understated.
There could be no mistaking,
but these were civilians.
[man on TV]
Amid the human debris
were the bodies of women,
children,
and at least one baby.
[melancholic music playing]
[Peter] The shock
of that kind of image
just overrides any kind
of possible excuse
or justification,
by those who ultimately
were responsible.
[indistinct wailing, crying]
Margaret had a very intense
morality about her.
Because what she shot
went out to the world
and affected hundreds,
thousands of people.
[Tom] She had the spirit.
She had the determination.
She wanted to show
the world at times,
the brutality of w*r,
particularly the impact
on the innocents.
The impact on the children.
[Susan] She was
very empathetic with people.
She liked filming people.
That's the impression I have.
"You can't cover w*r,
remotely. It's about people."
You know,
that's what she would say.
[Stefano] A lot of
the narratives about Margaret
are that, "You're so tough,
tough, tough."
Tough was what she did.
Tough was not how she acted.
[On screen] "Hi, Margaret!"
[On screen] "Hi, Margaret!"
[laughs] "Hello, Margaret."
Hi, Margaret!
[Stefano] She would tell you
in so many different ways
that she didn't care
about people.
"People are screwed.
People are bad.
Humanities is a mess."
But when it came down to it,
she was relating to
those kids.
You could see
she appreciated humanity.
[Christiane] Every interview
and every picture
and every image
and every story of civilian
under fire was evidence.
[Stefano] It certainly seems
on the outside
that Margaret may have made,
after her sh**ting,
a deal with death.
Could seem that way
given how enthusiastically
she kept on
with combat camera work.
"Okay, my love. Let's go.
Done it to me once."
That's the words she gave me.
"Let's keep on going."
[President Bill Clinton]
I call upon all parties
to agree
to an immediate cease-fire.
[Peter] So they declared
a cease-fire for,
I think it was 4 am,
the morning of 27th of April.
So, on the evening
of the 26th,
we were saying, "Okay,
so, what do we do?"
"Go back to Beirut tomorrow?"
"Should we hang around?"
While we were mulling
all those possibilities,
shortly before midnight,
on the 26th,
four hours before
the cease-fire was due,
we heard two
distinctive whooshes...
very close by.
A rocket had been launched
literally from the corner
of our building,
like Hezbollah.
And we said, "Okay...
[chuckles]
we've got maybe three
minutes
before the Israelis
retaliate."
We're on the phone to Atlanta.
It was on with the Bureau
and Israel saying,
"Oh, make sure the...."
Couple of the team
rushed down the stairs
and the minutes tick by...
"By the way,
where's Margaret?"
She was up on the roof,
with a camera, waiting to see
what would happen next.
Waiting to film
the building being blown up
with her on top of it.
[tense music intensifies]
[high intensity
electronic static]
In the end,
they didn't retaliate.
There were
no strikes that day.
But in case,
there was a retaliation,
she wanted to make sure
that she didn't miss the shot.
[Joe] Margaret felt
if somebody was mistreating
someone...
she would
stand up against them.
She wasn't afraid of anyone.
Maybe she wasn't
able to do it as a kid,
but definitely, as an adult,
she would not stay quiet.
[Christiane] Her pictures
told the truth.
Our stories
and Margaret's pictures
gradually forced
our democracies
not to turn away.
In the end,
after a terrible
m*ssacre at Srebrenica,
the US-led coalition came in,
in about two weeks
with very few casualties,
if any, on the Serb side.
They bombed the Serbian
military installations
around the hills
that were surrounding
the valley in which Sarajevo
was located.
And the w*r stopped.
It was as simple as that.
The w*r stopped.
And I attribute that...
in large part, to
the journalism in Bosnia
and to the pictures
that camera women
like Margaret Moth
and all her colleagues
sent out to the world.
Well, I think
if you don't film,
then things just carry on.
I think if you do film,
things can carry on.
They can change.
[Christiane] They tried
to silence her,
but they were not able
to make her
put down her camera.
Margaret didn't want
to suppress any story.
If there was a story,
she wanted to tell it.
You know, when they say
a picture is worth
a thousand words,
Margaret's pictures were
worth 100,000 words. So...
[camera shutter clicks]
[Stefano] I think
what drove Margaret
was a real need
to be who she was.
and not have anybody
tell her who to be.
[camera shutter clicks]
Really, powerfully,
a need to be just me.
[camera shutter clicks]
Relentlessly,
tenaciously, defiant.
[laughs]
The day that I contacted her
after all that time
was I think four days
after she had been diagnosed
with cancer,
with stage IV cancer.
[sentimental music playing]
You know, I felt funny,
felt good enough
about myself, to call her.
And...
to find out she was dying.
So we just started
hanging out again, you know.
Went to Mexico with Joe,
went to Mexico City stayed
there for a little while.
[both laughing]
[Joe] She was not afraid.
Even at the end,
we drove by, I guess,
a cremation place.
And she said,
"Oh, that's where I'm going to
go up in smoke."
And I was, "What?"
"I'm going to go up in smoke."
"See, the chimney,
that's where I'm going to go
up in smoke."
[Jeff] She was like a Buddha.
You felt better
in her presence.
[sighs]
You could sit with her,
and you felt like
when you got up,
[quavering] you took
something away.
[Joe] We were friends
for a long time.
We were friends for
25 years and...
and I would say soulmates.
Oh, I just missed
calling her, you know,
calling her every day.
And how she would do anything,
you know, how she would...
do things and I always
think about Margaret daily.
[Jeff] I wish I'd played
certain hands differently.
You know, I wish I was more
able
to be more honest
with her
instead of just turning
my back on her.
You know, I feel less
than okay about that.
After she was shot,
she rewrote her story.
She went through 25 surgeries.
Most people would have
thrown in the towel.
She regained
that lust for life.
[Margaret]
[sombre music playing]
[Jeff] Participating
in this documentary...
It brought her back to me.
Seeing that somebody else
cared about her
as much as I do.
[sobs softly]
[melancholic music playing]
["Side on" playing]
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