In December, Engel and his producer Ghazi Balkiz, camera operator John Kooistra, and freelance journalist Aziz Akyavas were driving in a rebel-controlled area when a group of gunmen stormed their vehicle, dragged them from their car, executed one of the rebels they were traveling with, and held them hostage. Over five days, they were moved them from safehouse to safehouse while being subject to psychological warfare, including mock executions.

Engel’s reports from today will begin airing on NBC tomorrow.

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Iraq has experienced a number of violent sectarian attacks over the last week, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Al Jazeera has the details on what happened:

“We took a decision to suspend the licence of some satellite channels that adopted language encouraging violence and sectarianism,” Mujahid Abu al-Hail of the Communications and Media Commission (CMC) said on Sunday…

Responding to the accusation, Al Jazeera said in a statement: ”We are astonished by this development. We cover all sides of the stories in Iraq, and have done for many years. The fact that so many channels have been hit all at once though suggests this is an indiscriminate decision.

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Holly Williams

Receiving the award for this particular story was especially rewarding for Williams, who tells TVNewser Guangcheng’s escape to the U.S. embassy in Beijing  was “the most exciting story” she covered during the time she was based in China. Williams met Guangcheng before he went to prison and was “very impressed” with him as a person, she says.

“It’s a story that’s close to my heart. It was wonderful to be honored for it,” Williams says. “I tend to think history isn’t about big, broad trends. It’s about individuals that make a difference. I think the great escape was a great example of that.”

To cover the story, Williams and her cameraman snuck into Guangcheng’s hometown at night when the village was unprotected. After being spotted by a local official during their first attempt to enter the village, the pair made a “hasty escape.” They were subsequently tailed by the official for several miles.

“I thought really that we’d blown the story,” Williams recalls.  continued…

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Raddatz will then make her way to the Korean peninsula where she will speak with Gen. James Thurman, the commander of U.S. troops in South Korea.

“Few people realize that we have 28,000 forces in South Korea,” Raddatz tells TVNewser. “It is an extraordinarily volatile time in that region as the new North Korean leader makes threat after threat. It is a region that should be getting far more attention.”

“This is such a critical time in both of these places,” says Raddatz, who has made two dozen trips to Iraq and Afghanistan for ABC News over the last 11 years. “What the Americans do in Afghanistan in the next two years to wind this war down will determine the success or failure of more than a decade of fighting here.”

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Leventhal, who joined Fox News in 1997, covered both stories — the war for nine weeks as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Marine Corps’ 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, and the hurricane during a “very scary night” in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.

Reflecting on the Iraq War, Leventhal calls his time embedded in Iraq and Kuwait “the pinnacle” of his career as a reporter.

“I look back on it and can’t believe that I was there. It was such a challenging and exhausting experience, physically taxing and demanding,” he tells TVNewser. “[It was] by far the greatest assignment I’ve ever had.”

Leventhal, who has made five trips to Iraq and four to Afghanistan, said he wouldn’t hesitate to go back to another war zone.

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CNN’s Wolf Blitzer recalls retreating to a bunker with a gas mask during a scare:

ABC’s Martha Raddatz talks to the “PBS Newshour” about her coverage:
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When we as journalists go into the field, we know the risks we are taking. But I guess we, or at least I, always thought, “It is not going to happen to us.” But this time, it did happen to us. This does not stem from an unrealistic approach to things, events and life, because trust me: What I see in the field is very real. We cover war and conflict zones and in those situations, bad things happen and people die. The way I go about it is to plan for the worst but hope for the best.

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It is incredibly compelling footage, and as we have reported many times before, foreign media is often on the receiving end of this kind of treatment.

WATCH:

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The rescue took place when Engel and his team were being transported to a Hezbollah stronghold in Foua.

We didn’t know how long it would take to get to Foua. But seven minutes into the trip–we were counting minutes to keep track of distances–the driver slammed on his brakes. “Checkpoint! Checkpoint!” he yelled. Through the corner of my blindfold I could see the headlights of a vehicle facing us in the road ahead.

The two gunmen exited the car and opened fire on the guards at the checkpoint. They were killed. The trail car fled.
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Engel wrote the article in a diary format, recounting to the minute what happened. Subscribers can read the full account, but the excerpt focuses on the kidnapping itself, as well as the murder of one of their bodyguards, and the psychological torture that ensued:

“Get going!” a gunman yelled at me in Arabic, pointing his weapon at my chest.

I looked at him blankly, pretending not to understand. Foreigners who speak Arabic in the Middle East are often assumed to be working for the C.I.A. or Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. The gunman took me by the finger, holding on to it by the very tip. I could have pulled it away with the smallest tug.

But then what? Then go where?

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It was a gonzo journalism stunt at its finest, and it was chronicled by VICE for its upcoming TV newsmagazine on HBO. The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter gives the tick-tock on how the trip went down. Some kety details: HBO paid a little extra to VICE, beyond the agreed upon licensing fees, to help pay for the trip. Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters were paid an undisclosed sum to go on the trip, and it isn’t yet cl;ear when the North Korea trip will air on the series, which debuts April 5.

To say this was all part of Vice’s master plan would overstate the matter. The producers and reporters had no assurances that Mr. Kim would attend the game. But when they arranged the trip to North Korea, a rarity in and of itself, they thought like diplomats. To get what they wanted, they considered what they could give — and they came up with Mr. Rodman and the Globetrotters. “We knew he’d be tempted by basketball,” said a Vice spokesman, referring to Mr. Kim…

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Credit: Lorenzo Bevilaqua/ABC Television

ABC’s “This Week” scored a surprise interview with former NBA star Dennis Rodman and Shane Smith, the co-founder of VICE. Rodman just returned from North Korea, where he watched the Harlem Globetrotters play basketball, and partied with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Rodman and the VICE crew were the first Americans to meet with the North Korean leader since he assumed power. He is known to be a big basketball fan.

“He wants Obama to do one thing: Call him,” Rodman told George Stephanopoulos. “He said, ‘If you can, Dennis – I don’t want [to] do war. I don’t want to do war.’ He said that to me.”

Rodman called Kim Jong Un ‘my friend,” drawing pushback from Stephanopoulos, and ended the interview by saying “don’t hate me.”

Rodman’s trip was documented by VICE for its upcoming HBO newsmagzine. Video of his “This Week” appearance is here.

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Correspondent and Islamabad bureau chief Amna Nawaz traveled to Waziristan for the series, the first foreign journalist granted permission by Pakistan’s government to do so. Some of her reports apparently focus on the Pakistani military’s efforts to build roads and schools in the isolated region.

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Iran dominated its match-up with the U.S., but the real drama happened in the press room. Iranian security guards confiscated footage from CNN, and erased a handful of interviews conducted during the tourney.

“It was a rare, golden opportunity to show how sports can bring countries together,” Sayah said, noting that someone sent a text message to security saying that CNN was dragging politics into the tournament by asking about U.S./Iran relations. “After they erased the interviews, they said that we can do the same interviews again. We made sure that no one made us compromise our report editorially.”

WATCH:

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Now on day 12 of her coverage of the Oscar Pistorious murder trial, Kosinski writes on the “Today” blog with some grizzly behind the scenes details… with regard to her pants. It seems that she only has one pair, and they have been getting plenty of use.

I was able to somehow persuade a hair salon over the phone to deliver my favorite shampoo and conditioner to my hotel, which was a nice comfort when I inevitably started to run out of products as well, but there would be no doing that with clothing.

Thus, my 11-day trouser run. The longest ever. Thank goodness.

As she notes, when you are on-camera, it doesn’t particularly matter what you are wearing below the waist.

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