In The Hot Zone - a podcast with Kevin Sites

One Year, One Man, Twenty Wars

"...that is when I realize that I don't have to be beholden to anyone to get my unedited version of this story on record. I still have my own independent war blog." - Kevin Sites

Kevin Sites

Kevin's first book, In The Hot Zone, One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars, was just published by Harper Perennial, and includes a bonus DVD, full-length documentary film by Kevin, "A World of Conflict."

As a solo journalist, or “SoJo”, Sites carries a backpack of portable digital technology to shoot, write, edit and transmit multimedia reports. His past assignments have brought him to nearly every region of the world from the Middle East to South America, from Central Asia to Eastern Europe.

Sites became a flashpoint of controversy in November 2004 when, as an NBC News correspondent, he videotaped the shooting of a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a Falluja mosque by a U.S. Marine—one of the biggest stories of the current Iraqi war. After the video’s airing, Sites was praised as a journalist willing to reveal the harsh realities of war and simultaneously vilified as a traitor to both the Marine unit that embedded him and his country. For his television and web coverage of the story, Sites was honored with the 2005 Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism and was nominated for a national Emmy Award, his second such honor.

Sites’ controversial and award-winning war blog, www.kevinsites.net, revolutionized the genre as one of the first blogs that combined text, digital images and audio to provide readers with an intimate, behind-the-lines look at the war in Iraq and its coverage by mainstream media. Wired Magazine named Sites the recipient of their RAVE Award in 2004—the first ever for blogging.

Sites’s coverage extends from the jungles of Colombia where he filmed U.S. anti-drug efforts, including coca spraying operations and the Colombian government’s Jungle Commando training, to ground zero in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where he witnessed the aftermath of the 2005 Southeast Asia tsunami. He was captured by Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia and threatened with death while attempting to be the first western journalists to reach Tikrit during the initial invasion of Iraq. Sites spent nearly six months in Afghanistan covering the Northern and Eastern Alliance forces before and after the fall of the Taliban, where he shot some of the earliest video of the conflict’s ground combat, including the first American casualty—a journalist wounded during a Taliban mortar attack.

Sites’s career spans cable and network news as well as print journalism. As a producer for NBC News, he received an Edward R. Murrow Award for coverage of the Kosovo war and was nominated for a national Emmy Award for contributions to a series on landmines. He has produced shows such as NBC’s Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and ABC's This Week with David Brinkley. Sites has published numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, including Popular Science, BlackBook and The New Times, among others.

During a two-year sabbatical, Sites served as Broadcast Lecturer at California Polytechnic State University, Cal Poly, in San Luis Obispo and was named Distinguished Lecturer by the California Faculty Association. While at Cal Poly, he initiated a joint research project with Xybernaut Inc. to modify wearable computers for solo digital reporting.

Questions Peter Clayton asked Kevin Sites:

I know you spent some time teaching journalism courses at a university in California, and continue to guest lecture - what do you say to these young enthusiastic journalism students who want to follow your footsteps into TV news?


Before taking the gig at Yahoo you had worked at NBC – and had covered the attack on Falluja, Iraq, in 2004. You were one of the "imbedded journalists" and as such were confronted with a life defining experience – the Mosque shooting – can you tell our audience what happened – and the consequences?


So you have a meeting at 30 rock – you wanted to go to Hong Kong – and NBC wanted you to get a hair cut and shave?

So career transition – you write in your book about your first day at the Yahoo! Offices – can you share some of those feelings with us?

Kevin's book also includes a documentary film World of Conflict – which tells many of the stories in the book in through video. –  And, You bring this up quite often – you went out to present a human face to these conflicts. Often all we see on TV are soldiers and bombs exploding – you show the aftermath – the people

Lebanon – We hate America (footage reminded me of 9/11 that pasty chalk over everyone.

And yet, resilience – the young girl in Afghanistan.

Do you have a compulsion to cover conflict? Do you wish you were in Burma right now trying to find out what happened to the Monks?

Another part of this story is technology. You're a SoJo – a solo journalist, able to go any where in the world with a laptop, small DV camera, and Satalite uplink upload a report.

You covered the Tsunami in Indonesia – staggering loss of life – and yet, somehow, easer to come to grips with than the death and destruction of war.

Does it bother you that many people here in the US seem far more interested in Brittany's custody battles than on what's happening in Iran or Iraq – Or Israel?…

Your current project is called People of the Web?

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