Using previously unseen footage, veteran cameramen Fred Scott and Darren Conway reflect on filming the war. Scott was with John Simpson's team that endured friendly fire en route to Baghdad while Conway was embedded with the Royal Marines.
Interview: Fred Scott
BBC Four: What motivates you to keep doing such a dangerous job?
Fred Scott: It's a question that I and a lot of other colleagues have been giving a lot more thought to, partly because it seems that in the past few years the television cameraman has become a preferred target. It's not just wars but things like the anti-globalisation protests. Neither side particularly wants you around - either the police and security forces, or the demonstrators who perceive you as part of the enemy.
So why do I still want to do it? I think it's important. You have to witness and record things.
BBC Four: There was so much TV news coverage of Iraq and a lot of documentaries are now coming out - it must be the most filmed conflict in history. Were you aware of how many crews were out there?
FS: I was only aware of a fraction of what was going on everywhere else. I had no idea there were very large number of dedicated embedded crews solely making documentaries. I suppose that if the war was inevitable that might explain the huge numbers of people who went to film it. Of course this White House is the most television savvy in history and they were never going to lose with the embeds even if there were some embarrassing moments.
BBC Four: What are your thoughts on embedded journalists?
FS: I thought it was wildly more successful than many of us has anticipated. I was in the last Gulf War in 1991 when there was a relatively small number of embeds and they got practicality nothing compared with what the unilaterals got. This time, how it looked before the war started, was that if you were going to gamble then being a unilateralist was the way to play this. We had no idea of the amazing access and pictures that would be generated with the embed system. And I hadn't realised until I watched the coverage how many there were.
BBC Four: One of the most fascinating aspects of the documentary is seeing the amount of admin required just to get you and the team to war zone. Is that a good representation of the daily grind?
FS: It is - it's just that it was more elaborate and bizarre portrait of that. Our Northern Iraq team was by no means a really large BBC deployment. It was a dozen guys and a satellite dish. It is unusual to take a coach for four days though...
BBC Four: As John Simpson says, "It's like Spinal Tap".
FS: We'd been snowed out of airports closer to where we needed to be so we hired a coach in the middle of the night to drive us through the snow to this rotten little frontier town. We then got on another coach to drive on and on and on. You do spend a lot of time scrambling.
BBC Four: Has the tragic friendly fire incident had an impact on how you view your job?
FS: Not very obviously yet. It's also the second friendly fire incident I've been in. I was with Rageh Omaar and the BBC team in Kabul about ten days before John Simpson arrived. We were guests of the Taleban at that point. The US Air Force flattened the house across from the BBC office so if things had been arranged differently in the house and the window hadn't been taped some of us would have been dead or seriously injured. So if anything I'm not under any illusion that any army, no matter what they say, is going to take that many precautions over the fate of journalists. I don't have much credibility on the home front telling my family, "Don't worry, nothing will happen".
