Nazira Khairzad was asleep in her bedroom in Bamyan, Afghanistan, where she lived with her family, when her phone rang. It was a driver she knew from Free to Run, a non-profit, offering to help her and her family escape the city, where the Taliban had just entered. From where he was calling downtown, residents were scrambling for refuge.

Nazira stayed inside. She was afraid Taliban soldiers were on the other side of her door, which opened to an outside staircase. With no more cell credit, she could not call her family downstairs. Her phone rang again. Nazira’s soccer teammates, many of whom ended up escaping into the mountains surrounding the valley-city of Bamyan, asked where she would flee. She changed into a burqa, packed a suitcase, and began clearing the walls, which were adorned with certificates she and her sister had won from soccer matches, ski competitions, and races. She piled them into a tapestry, along with the trophies that lined the mantel, and tied everything up. At around 4:30 in the morning, her father called to tell her their neighbors were driving to Kabul. “You should go with them,” she recalls him saying.

In Kabul, Nazira joined her older sister in the basement room she shared with several other women, the pair sharing a twin bed.

“It was not my choice to come to Germany,” Nazira told me, calling from her home in Neuberg, where she lives with her parents and two brothers. On August 15^th, when the Taliban reached Kabul, Nazira took refuge with her ski coach, Gul Hussain Baizada. Through his work as a tour guide, Baizada had contacts outside the country who he said could help them flee. Nazira had called her parents from the airport. “If you stay in Afghanistan,” she recalls them telling her on the phone, “the Taliban will kill you.”

Nazira was born in 2004, just three years after U.S.-allied forces overtook the Taliban. In the years that followed, Afghan society liberalized. Young women returned to school in droves. In 2007, a group of women formed the Afghan Women’s National Team. Still, women in sports met backlash. When Nazira and Nazima, at 11 and 13, started their city’s first girls’ soccer team, they did so in private, telling their parents they were heading to math class before sneaking off to early-morning practice. Undeterred by the stigma they faced, the sisters were soon winning matches, outrunning male peers, and dominating ski challenges. In 2015, shortly after Nazira started playing soccer, she ran a 10k race and finished first, crossing the finish line in tattered sandals and a long dress. By the time the Taliban took over, she was keeping goal for the Afghan Women’s National Team in Kabul, preparing for a match in Tajikistan.

In August 2021, as the Taliban neared the capital, photos circulated online of Mahjabin Hakimi, a volleyball player, her head severed from her body. The message was clear: women in sports should fear for their lives.

On August 21^st, 2021, Nazira flew to Italy with Baizada, his family, and two other athletes. Within her first few days there, Nazira received a message from the Afghanistan Football Federation, instructing her to go to the airport with her parents. Her teammates on the Afghan Women’s National Team flew to Australia—too late for her to join them. She found her own team in Ferrara, where she was placed in a house with other refugees. In February of 2023, she was selected to play on AC Milan. Meanwhile, she struggled to find a way for her parents to join her in Europe. Given her background in sports, Nazira worried the Taliban would target her family. Her sister, Nazima, who was waiting for a European visa in Pakistan, harbored the same concerns. Headaches often debilitated her. At the time, she dismissed them as symptoms of stress.

By the time Nazima reached Germany—after visiting her sister in Italy and a doctor in France—her health had worsened even more. She often vomited. Several times, she fainted. Drained and confused, she visited the doctor and left with no conclusive diagnosis. On August 21^st, 2023, she underwent an emergency MRI. Nazira, in Italy, got a call from her sister’s roommate, who said Nazima was in the hospital. At this time, Nazira’s parents were with her in Italy (Nazira’s coach on FC Milan, along with several journalists she knew, helped them get there). Nazira and Nazima’s mother, shocked, insisted they visit Nazima in the Frankfurt hospital where she was recovering. The MRI had revealed a tumor at the base of Nazima’s brain, next to her cervical spine.

After an emergency operation to remove the tumor, Nazima went into a coma for several days. When she woke up, the right side of her body was paralyzed. The operation had damaged her nerves. When Nazira saw her sister—soon after surgery—she lay supine and swollen on the hospital bed. Oxygen tubes formed a web around her. The doctor said she would never stand or walk again. The family decided to stay in Germany.

For four months, Nazira stayed in the hospital with Nazima, sleeping on a chair or in a small closet. She accompanied her sister through persistent nightmares, incessant requests for pain killers, and a second surgery. Visitors were not allowed past midnight. When nurses signaled to Nazira it was time to leave, she nodded and waited for them to exit the room before falling asleep.

By the time Nazima was discharged in early 2024, she weighed less than 82 pounds—down from 119 when she arrived. She still struggles to eat properly, run, and do what she most enjoys: ski. Even today, it feels like heavy stones weigh down her right arm. Between appointments with an occupational therapist and a psychologist, she and Nazira train. They plan to run a race in Spain at the end of the month. Both will move through airport security unsure Nazira will make it back. Nazima, her two brothers, and her parents were all granted asylum. Nazira was not.

“I have duldung,” Nazira said. “It’s worse than deport,” Nazima added. At a café along the Main River, the three of us peered over Nazira’s ID. “Exclusion of deportation (Duldung),” it read in German. And under that: “No residence permit! The holder is required to leave the country!” A red diagonal line slashed through the page. By EU law, foreign nationals cannot apply to asylum in two countries. Since Nazira has asylum in Italy, her application was rejected in Germany. Duldung, which translates roughly to “toleration,” allows her to stay.

“This is rejection, but they say due to humanitarian you can stay here for a while,” said Asef Hossaini, founder of Abad, a Berlin-based support organization for Afghans. Duldung may be issued to people without passports or documents, people who are too sick to travel, or people like Nazira, who could be killed at home. Duldung has been described as a state of “indefinite waiting” and “legal limbo.” “It’s just humiliating,” said Qaiz Alamdar, an Afghan living in Berlin.

Nazira’s status puts her in a precarious situation. Duldung does not make a deportation order go away; it just delays the process. The fear of being deported—and being separated from her family, her soccer team, and her investment in adjusting to German language and life—looms. News stories fan fear among many immigrants living in Germany, whose fate blurs as the country’s politics shift right. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to curb irregular migration and increase deportations, a move some say is a reaction to the anti-immigrant party AfD’s rise in popularity.

Afghans, who make up the second-largest group of migrants in Germany, are especially at risk. In July, Germany sent 81 Afghan men convicted of crimes back to Afghanistan, the second such flight from the country since the Taliban took over. So far, criminals have been the only Afghan deportees, but the government may soon target people residing illegally in Germany. Merz’s recent collaboration with the Taliban signals a future of quid pro quo negotiations, by which the Taliban cooperates with Germany’s deportation goals in exchange for a hand in the country’s consulates. In July, Germany allowed two Taliban officials to work in the Afghan consulate. This means the Taliban now has access to biometric data and personal information about Afghans in over twenty countries.

These shifting conditions of protection for Afghans jeopardize any sense of stability Nazira has found in Germany. Today, though, she is focused on herself. On Sunday, she ran the Frankfurt marathon, finishing with a negative split. Under constraining circumstances, sports give her hope. “When I play football,” she told me, “I feel free.”

Two weeks before I met her at a protest in Berlin, Kübra Çinar was on her knees, hands cuffed behind her back and forehead pinned to the earth at the Ashdod port in Israel. She and over 400 other activists had just been intercepted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after six weeks aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Until the moment of interception, only 70 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza, the crew-members believed they would reach their destination. 

“We were so close,” said Çinar. “Even after the boat got intercepted, we still had hope that we were going to break the siege.” 

Sitting with Çinar outside a Berlin coffee shop with the dusk air biting our noses, it felt like a part of her was still on the boat, believing in the failed mission. A fierce hope burned in her warm brown eyes, which were framed by round glasses. Apart from the keffiyeh wrapped around her shoulders, though, I couldn’t have picked the 30-year-old Çinar out of a crowd of Berlin millennials. Her long hair was drawn back in a tight ponytail, her attire casual and monochrome. She told me that before becoming a full-time activist, she worked in finance. 

“But I quit my job. Well, actually, I got fired during the mission. So I’m unemployed now,” she explained. “But it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not the only one.”

Çinar often speaks like this, deflecting questions about herself to speak of the many. When the pro-Palestine movement spread across Germany in 2023, converging on Berlin, she saw it as her responsibility to call attention to the suffering in Gaza, especially as a German citizen. Çinar is of Turkish descent, but was born and raised in Berlin. She is deeply critical of Germany. “I never felt like a German,” she said. “It’s like this country never denazified.” 

Over the past two years, the pro-Palestine movement has become the center of Çinar’s life. She started attending protests soon after the Israel-Hamas war began and quickly became a leader. She has adopted the habits of the movement, referring to the IDF as the “IOF” (Israeli Occupational Forces) and constantly bringing the focus of our conversation back to Gaza. 

For this level of involvement, Çinar and her friends in the movement have been targeted by the Berlin police. One friend, Aala, who asked to go by her first name, has been particularly impacted. The 20-year-old Aala is a refugee from Syria who fled from Damascus to Germany with her family eight years ago. She still lives at home with her parents, who are originally from the Golan Heights. She says that the police have frequently come to her house looking for her.

“They come and they ring,” she explained. “They ask, ‘Is Aala here?’” Once, they gave her father a letter banning her from participating in protests for a week. Of course, Aala did not listen. “I would never sign it,” she says. “I know my rights.”

According to Çinar and Aala, the police know both of them by name and focus on them at protests to make an example of them. Aala recalls an instance when the German police removed her hijab and refused to return it to her for 20 minutes. That night, she was held in jail for saying “from the river to the sea,” which is an illegal chant in Germany. 

“It’s actually really easy to be a terrorist in Germany,” Aala joked, bitterly. “It’s enough when you wear a keffiyeh. It’s enough when you’re Arab. You don’t need to say anything.” 

On top of the frequent harassment, activists are beginning to feel that their protests are futile. Even as public sentiment in Germany has soared in support of Palestinian liberation, little has changed on a policy level. The demands of halting arms exports to Israel, recognizing Palestine as a state, and ensuring accountability for those who have committed atrocity crimes, have not been met. Germany is clinging to its longstanding commitment to support Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. 

“I was tired of the activism in Berlin. We have been fighting for two years, and nothing has changed,” Çinar explained. 

Already craving change when a member of the flotilla steering committee reached out to her and invited her to join the mission, Çinar did not hesitate to accept. “As a German citizen, I feel responsible to do more than I did in the last three years, because my government is complicit. Despite the cruel past of German history, Germany is still positioning itself on the wrong side of history,” she said.

The GSF mission included 44 vessels bearing 500 volunteers, activists, and lawmakers, representing at least 43 countries. The boats carried symbolic, though still meaningful, amounts of humanitarian cargo for the region’s starved population. 

In August, Çinar found herself on the Alma, the lead ship of the GSF, which departed from the port of Spain and began making its way across the Mediterranean in late August. On the boat, a white vessel bedazzled with Palestinian flags, she found community and passionate individuals who shared her views. She enjoyed cooking meals and getting to know her shipmates, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. A video on Instagram shows Çinar sitting on the sunny deck beside her shipmate Tadhg Hickey. “She is the purest, most dedicated activist I think I’ve ever met in my life,” Hickey says of Çinar in the video.

Çinar also faced hardships on the Alma, ranging from the storms which might hit any fleet of boats sailing across the world to multiple drone attacks. On Sept. 9, the Alma was attacked by a drone containing an incendiary device and was damaged by the fire. The crew extinguished the flames quickly and no one was injured.

Then, on October 1 at 8pm, the Alma was intercepted by the IDF. Soldiers boarded the boat and began arresting its members on the deck. Çinar described the interception as the “worst part” of the mission, recalling the moment when Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir confronted the crew in person. 

“He just showed up,” Çinar recalled. She described Ben Gvir gathering the activists together and trying to “make his one man show” by accusing them of being “baby-killers.” He had promised to treat the flotilla crew as terrorists. When taken captive, Çinar thought he intended to follow through. 

For the next six days, Çinar and the others were held in the Ktz’iot prison in the Negev desert. For the first 50 hours, according to Çinar, they were not given food, and fresh water was withheld for the duration of their captivity. Instead, Çinar and her compatriots drank toilet water. The men were separated from the women, and some were isolated for hours or days at a time, according to Çinar. “When we got food, we got bad food,” she said. “They treated us like animals.”

She remembers eggs which the guards threw into the cells after holding them in the sun for several days, and she cannot forget their lingering smell. She also recalls being given carrots filled with maggots. “Most of us didn’t eat anything,” she said. 

On the 6th of October, the crew was released, and the next day, Çinar returned to Germany. “The six days were really hard for all of us, but it was also a reminder of reality,” Cinar said. 

The experience made her consider how little she had understood about the Palestinian experience as an outsider. “We think we know the Palestinian struggle, we are saying that we know, but I just realized we didn’t know anything,” she noted. “Being in this prison completely changed my view of how barbaric, how inhuman [the Israeli army] can be.”

Back in Berlin, Çinar is back on the protest scene. After the energetic yet uneventful demonstration near Checkpoint Charlie where I met Çinar, a group of female organizers, including Çinar and Aala, retreated to the tables outside Coffee Fellows. They debriefed the rally while savoring warm coffee and smoking seemingly endless cigarettes. 

Nestled among them, Çinar appeared satisfied, but fatigued. She told me that she missed her life on the boat and the security of believing in a specific mission. She now finds it difficult to eat, drink, and sleep, unable to shake the knowledge of the people still in prison. “We do not know how privileged we are,” she said. “Our duty is to use this privilege for those who cannot.”

The activist has been peppered with questions about the flotilla since returning to Germany. But Çinar refuses to remain in what one might expect would be a tempting limelight. “I’m trying to tell people what happened to me. But at the same time, I don’t want people to talk about me, because I am not the mission,” she explained. “I’m nothing. I’m just a human being who did what the government was supposed to do.”

I really appreciated Raphi’s question about how to determine whether embedding is necessary. My instinct in my very short reporting life is that it is always, always better. It may not be strictly necessary — many stories you can do a perfectly fine job from afar — but the color and depth it adds is so, so important for an in-depth story. While Raphi and I’s trip to Gummersbach, for example, was just a day, we both came away with scenes and detail that would have been nearly impossible to reconstruct otherwise. Video does not capture the smell of a stripped-out movie theater or the sheer amount of dust in the air. Being there physically is also huge for trust. In Gummersbach, I connected with sources by eating lunch with them and helping them rip fence debris out of the ground, building far more meaningful relationships in just a few hours than I could have done virtually. You can just talk to so many more people when you’re physically there. I find the phone deeply frustrating in that sense; you are constrained by annoying things like schedules and your international cell connection.

As a counterpoint, a couple years ago I spent more than six months reporting a story about a Princeton-run research center in Kenya, examining the center’s colonial history and the living conditions of the locals employed there. I had visual descriptions and photos of their huts, which didn’t have running water or electricity, and plenty of in-depth descriptions of the property’s colonial-era ranch house, still with some of the old British Empire trappings. My editors contemplated sending me there and we even went so far as to draw up travel plans. We ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the expense. My story turned out well, but it was missing the texture and feeling of just being there. I think that’s especially relevant to visiting a site of trauma, whether recent or historical. There is something about seeing it for yourself that is the ultimate gut-check to any reporting done virtually: yes, it really was that bad. Embedding for a lower-stakes story does not have the same payoff, even if it does make the reporting richer in the ways I’ve outlined.

I would also say that embedding is especially necessary for a so-called top-down pitch: you have a sense of a trend, but do not yet have characters and scenes to fill it out. This is what Caitlin Dickerson so masterfully does in her own reporting, for instance, but that also works on smaller scales. If you’re writing about contentious school board meetings, obviously you should go to the meetings, see it for yourself, and meet the widest array of people involved. Reporting virtually relies far more on person-to-person networks, which can be tricky when trying to get the full story.

For Deb, I’d be interested in the story of how the Jonestown documentary came about. Did you think about going there while you were working on it? If you’ve been, did it enrich your understanding in a useful way?

These readings made me think more about the role of journalists who do not need to be experiencing the trauma and hardships of the population on which they are reporting, but choose to do so out of a sense of duty. On the one hand, it’s very brave. Cailin Doornbos refers to a “journalistic duty” she felt to travel to Ukraine and discover why Western weapons are so critical to Kyiv’s fight. I found her storytelling most effective in the description of the secret repair facilities which so few can access. This was the most unique aspect of her reporting and the images of Ukrainians caring so intently for destroyed Western weapons and “cannibalizing” really communicated the extent to which Ukraine depends on Western weapons. 

Doornbos lost me in the end, though. It was the final sentence that frustrated me: “While they still need additional military aid, the impact past donations have had on their fight is not forgotten by those whose lives depended on it. And I think that’s something we, as Americans, can take pride in.” Why is this necessary? Why not just tell us the story and let us make the judgment of whether or not to be proud as Americans of the impact our donations have had on the fight? It felt, frankly, unjournalistic and also not very interesting. What do others think about this?

Caitlin Dickerson’s Seventy Miles in Hell gripped me the whole time. I had read the piece before and am always shocked by how many nationalities are represented among the migrants in the Darien Gap. Dickerson’s immersive reporting allows her to capture nuances that would be difficult from afar: the interactions between the guides and the migrants, for example, and the role of the Indigenous Panamanians, and the bandits. While one could use reconstruction to achieve some of Dickerson’s physical descriptions, I don’t think it would be possible to communicate the moment when Maria Fernanda covers her eyes as her 7-year-old-daughter crosses the rock and says “Hold on tight, my princess!” without being there in person. 

This left me with the question: how do you know when you need to be there to report a story? Maybe, like Doornbos, you’ve been reporting on the same topic for a while. What tells you: It’s time for me to go actually embed in this place, and that’s the only way I can find out the information I need and tell the story that must be told, even if it’s dangerous?

I really appreciated Ceci’s comment about how we might practice embedding differently under constraints of time (and space) perhaps using video calls or social media. This reminded me of the most striking piece of embedded journalism I’ve encountered this year — the two episodes of This American Life featuring Banias, a 9-year-old girl in Gaza who reporter Chana Joffe-Walt has been speaking with over the phone for months. To get to know Banias, Chana just calls her on the phone, or facetimes her, for hours, allowing the child to dictate the nature of their calls. Banias gives her virtual house tours of a home once filled with nearly 80 relatives and describes her daily routine of “playing school” with other children, with the oldest taking on the role of teachers. She says things like “oh, here comes a bomb,” as casually as if she was announcing the arrival of the daily newspaper. Banias is a lens into the war so few can attain, and the medium of radio is the perfect way to introduce it to a broader audience. As a listener, I felt so embedded in her voice and her story that I needed to sit on my kitchen floor for a good few minutes after hearing the interview, the only time any piece of journalism has produced such a reaction in me.  

I frequently grapple with the tension between the limitations of a journalist’s role and the narrative authority that they are given. On one hand, being a journalist often means you are a visitor to the topic or community you are writing about. Even if I were to traverse the entirety of the Darien Gap myself, for example — exhaustion, food insecurity, and threats to violence included — to report on the stories of the migrants fleeing their home countries, that does not mean that I faced the same kind of political or economic violence that drove me to the desperation of a life-threatening escape, nor does it mean that I will understand the implications of a life afterwards. At the same time, ‘good journalism’ often seems defined by a kind of adjacency to authenticity. The ‘closer’ you are to portraying the reality of the lives you depict, the ‘better’ journalist you are. But any kind of journalist who claims ‘true’ authenticity, I think, is embellishing: there is only so much you can understand about something you are clearly not.

I think, though, that attempting to understand a life you will always be a stranger to is a valuable cause, not only because it provides the groundwork for good journalism, but because that is the very precondition of a healthy society that appears to be lacking in today’s political atmosphere. Take Caitlin Dickerson’s What I Saw in the Darien Gap: her embedded journalism brings her to multiple families undertaking the dangerous trek. From the relatively temporary and fragmentary encounters, Dickerson creates a patchwork for a whole. She puts into contrast the stories of these individuals with the wider political context of changing immigration policies in the Americas. I think Dickerson is well aware that she could never portray the full realities of the countless lives that are featured in her story. But her visceral descriptions and observations on the trail are only made available through her presence, and they build the contrast between the sterile bureaucracy that treat migrants as statistics and the harrowing stories of the migrants themselves. 

Madeleine Baran’s In the Dark Season 3 shows, though, that geographically embedded journalism is not an imperative (although, to some degree, I think it’s enabled by the fact that Baran’s work is primarily investigative and based on the past as opposed to Dickerson’s piece, which was more narrative and present). Baran approaches the Haditha massacres with a level of journalistic rigor that I didn’t think was humanly possible — thousands of FOIAs, hundreds of interviews, scouring the darkest and ugliest corners of the internet over the course of 4 years. While Baran does travel to Haditha for the project, the bulk of her research rests on interviews and data from the U.S. I would hesitate to say that Baran’s work is not a form of embedded journalism — Baran puts herself directly in front of the primary actors of the Haditha incident, visiting the homes of the marines, enduring harassment, etc. Which is to say, I think embedded journalism in the age of social media and OSINT can look very different from what embedded journalism looked like 10, 20 years ago.

In episode 1 of “In the Dark,” we learn about the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha at the hands of U.S. Marines, told as a neighbor, Khaled, remembers the event. Madeleine Baran, along with a team of journalists, follows the story over the course of four years through interviewing people connected to the case and analyzing archival materials.

As part of this project, Baran “embeds” herself with subjects through accompanying them on an investigation. Khaled, her primary subject, is searching for answers about the Haditha killing, and Baran’s reporting informs this search. In this respect, embedment is a collaborative effort, in which journalists chase stories along with their subjects. 

In some contexts, embedment requires journalists to risk their lives. Through her reporting in Ukraine, Cailin Doornbos put herself in danger to help American readers understand what happens on the front lines. Caitlin Dickerson’s chronicles through the Darién Gap offer another example of the dangers embedded reporting can involve. In both these contexts, immersive reporting is impossible without risks. Journalists must put themselves in danger to understand the dynamics of migration and war. 

Some information can only be uncovered through embedment. For instance, Dickerson verifies that some death counts of migrants in the Darién gap are underestimated through talking to people living along the crossing and seeing mass graves herself. Embedment also gives journalists access to otherwise inaccessible sources. Migrants likely trusted Dickerson more because she made herself “one of them.” 

On that note, embedment raises ethical challenges about the responsibility of journalists to maintain some level of distance with their sources. I question the ability of journalists to become “one of them.” Embedment risks providing journalists with a false sense of familiarity with a subject. Clearly, Dickerson gained a deeper understanding of the experience of crossing the Darién Gap through making the journey herself, rather than just speaking to migrants about it. At the same time, as a journalist, she is in a more secure position than many migrants crossing the gap. The experience of crossing, for Dickerson, might obscure the difference in privilege between her and migrants on the same path. 

At the same time, embedment might emphasize these differences. The process of accompanying subjects on their journeys–whether through the Darián Gap or through an investigation–might allow journalists to better understand the challenges their subjects face and, at the same time, their own position as observers. 

These readings led me to consider how we might practice embedment as students. Some of us, while in Berlin, embedded ourselves in stories. Raphi and Miriam embedded themselves in a Ukrainian church, traveling to the site and spending a day with the group organizing it. Most of us stuck to interviews. In some cases, interviews are all we can do, especially under the constraints of time. That said, I am curious about how we might expand the idea of embedment beyond spending time physically with a subject. What are other ways–through videocalls, shared routines, or social media–we might embed ourselves in stories from afar?

The embedded stories we read for this week all seem to have one common theme: they try to give a voice to issues otherwise overlooked. This mission, which often takes months or years of reporting, is a core belief of long-form journalism that is especially pronounced in these types of stories. If not for journalists doing this type of work, unjust actions from powerful parties would go unchecked, and it is why I believe journalism is a public service integral to the maintenance of democracy. 

The In the Dark podcast is a clear example of excellent narrative journalism. This format of episodes allows the New Yorker to present the story that otherwise would have taken up enough pages to fill a book, in an engaging manner. The listener is also able to see the actions of the reporter, their diligent work traveling to so many countries to find the right people to interview. In this open method of communication, the reporter derives their authority to tell the story, showing their work along the way. 

I was also especially impressed by the reporter who, when covering the Darien gap, made the journey twice herself. It is one thing to record the experiences of immigrants who survived the daunting trip, but it is another to make the trek along with the main subjects of the story. Far easier, the reporter could have found families who were willing to speak about the struggles of crossing the almost 70 miles of land in the jungle, but this would not have been able to capture the true feelings of the immigrants in the moment. By reporting in-person in high-risk areas, journalists are best equipped to tell stories of people living in those conditions. This holds true for front line war reporting as well. Just as soldiers are needed to fight wars, journalists are needed to ensure the public is kept informed about the conflict.

The reporting about Israeli intelligence agency coercion towards the International Criminal Court was an example of a different type of embedded coverage. In this piece by the Guardian, they were acting more as investigators, collaborating with other media sources in Palestine in order to gather the best information. 

For me personally, this type of reporting is really appealing because it offers the opportunity to fully investigate an issue and report something that is brand new. Often many news organizations cover public events in very similar articles. This reporting is also important because it maintains coverage on the day-to-day happenings of the government and other organizations, but I find myself more attracted to the reporting that is new when published. Learning about the types of projects these journalists have taken on is inspiring and helps me begin to think about what type of reporter I want to be in the future.

It was Christopher Tamm’s parents who first taught him not to trust the German government. Now, he is a member of the district council in Prignitz with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the far-right group opposed to immigration and openly hostile towards the other parties in government. 

Tamm’s father grew up in east Germany under the Soviet Union and witnessed firsthand the German reunification process in the 1990s. He was angered by the new capitalistic government destroying industries that were previously successful, and politicians moving from the west to govern over a community to which they did not belong. 

Tamm’s mother grew up in Soviet Russia and was familiar with the communist lifestyle, especially the curtailments of freedoms imposed by the government. For her, though, the government never pledged more, whereas Tamm’s father had to “learn it the hard way” that the “promise land” for east Germans did not match the public expectation. “He saw with his own eyes that not everything gold is shiny,” Tamm said. 

The experiences of Tamm’s parents shaped his childhood, as they instilled their beliefs “not to believe too much in the government,” but rather to “believe more in yourself.” For Tamm, though, these thoughts ended up shaping political views for years to come, especially his disapproval around government policies aiding immigration. 

Tamm’s introduction to migrants came as a 13 year old student in Bavaria where in 2015, he noticed a major influx of migrants in his classes.

At the time, the German government had opened its borders to Syrian refugees seeking asylum. In Syria, civil war was driving families from their homes, with the Assad government torturing many who did not support the authoritarian regime. Almost 300,000 Syrian refugees entered Germany in 2015, with an overall 46% migration increase from 2014. 

Many Germans were not accustomed to seeing so many refugees in their neighborhoods. Tamm remembers many migrants at his school asking for money in the hallways and the cafeteria. 

“I wanted to give them something, but I didn’t have much money, so I thought maybe I can give them some food. I gave him my grapefruit and my lunch bread, and he didn’t want it. I didn’t understand why, so I gave it to him again, and then he just threw it on the floor and said in German, ‘money, money.’”

After arriving in Germany, migrants were given support from the government for housing, healthcare, financial assistance, and language courses. Most refugees were required to pass language tests before being allowed to work in Germany, the process for which takes several months to over a year. In the meanwhile, immigrant families relied on monthly government stipends, which were more generous than many other countries but still required frugality.

For Tamm, though, this interaction with refugees at his school left a lasting negative impression.

After finishing school, Tamm planned to study law in Vienna. He arrived in 2020 when strict Covid rules put the country in lock down. Tamm never made it to law school, instead he moved to Russia because he didn’t want to live in a country that would prevent him from “going out [to] parties and having fun.”

Tamm moved back to Germany after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. He wanted to make sure that if a war spilled into Germany he would be able to serve, and he joined the army. In his company, Tamm remembered over half of the soldiers were from Afghan or Syrian or Moroccan descent. Though many were proud to have been raised in Germany and held passports, Tamm would not consider them German. 

“No matter how much you assimilate in a country, you cannot be 100% from that country.” Tamm believes that those of different ethnic backgrounds should not be classified as German, including children of immigrants in the second or third generations. 

Tamm was discharged from service after being deemed a security threat when the administration found out he had been living in Russia for more than half of the past five years. He was upset that he was dismissed while those from immigrant families were allowed to stay in the army, Tamm said. Tamm distinguishes himself from people who have German passports but are not “real Germans.”

Leaving the army sparked Tamm’s decision to enter the field of politics and was attracted to the anti-immigration sentiments from the AfD. “That’s the point where I didn’t understand our security politics, and I decided to get politically active.”

In 2023 when Tamm joined the AfD, party support was around 20% nationally. The AfD was initially created in 2013 as a single-issue party in response to global financial crisis policies that provided bailouts for struggling countries. In 2015, the AfD shifted focus to anti-immigration politics amid the influx of Syrian immigrants and intensified its nationalistic beliefs. Currently, AfD support has risen to 25% nationally, with more popularity in east German communities formerly part of the Soviet Union. 

Tamm resonates with the key party messaging, including the idea of “remigration,” that non-ethnic German migrants should be deported to their countries of origin. He feels that immigrants, specifically Muslim practicing immigrants, do not belong in German society.

“If you’re somebody who wants to wear a hijab, you don’t fit into Germany.”

Though Germany does not recognize any specific religion, many women are discriminated against for wearing a hijab, and certain states have banned women from wearing hijabs in government, public education, and clerical positions. Tamm would support his belief by saying that a hijab is a symbol of female suppression, though many Muslim women disagree. 

Tamm said that immigrants should migrate to countries in which they are most culturally similar, and that leaving one’s country due to hardship was “weak.” For many Syrians, however, Germany offered the greatest promise for opportunity and leaving Syria was not a matter of choice, as they faced torture. 

To recruit others to the AfD cause, Tamm has taken to posting images and short-form videos on social media. He sports a coiffed short cut with a sharp side part and a short mustache and beard. Along with several “remigration” posts and a MAGA hat selfie on his Instagram, Tamm targets LGBT+ groups. One video, which gained over a million views, clips of people saying in German “I’m gay,” “I’m lesbian,” “I’m transgender,” “I’m actually a fox,” is followed by his statement made driving a car “I’m m/w/g — male, white, German.”

Though LGBT+ sentiment is mixed within the AfD, and party co-leader Alice Weidel is openly lesbian, anti-immigration messages are uniform throughout. Influencers like Tamm, who is only 24, have helped generate a new wave of AfD support primarily from young, white German men. 

Jasmine, who is a graduate student at Freie University in Berlin, noticed her younger brother has been pulled to the political right by his social media feed. Her brother, a 17-year-old who now lives in the US but was born in Germany, has been telling her that more deportations are needed and immigrants are going to “replace us in the culture.” She believes that social media algorithms can “indoctrinate you into [an] anti-migrant racist.”

Tamm approaches his social media posts like a “business” with his videos making fun of left wing beliefs. “If you want to be successful, you have to do something that nobody is doing, and you have to find a niche that isn’t occupied. I found a niche with my provocative videos.” 

Today, Tamm serves as a member of the district council in Prignitz with the AfD, and hopes to continue his career in politics. He was recently quoted in a New York Times article at an AfD protest, telling a supporter who had his arm in a Hitler salute to “keep your arm up like this a little bit longer.” At the protest, Tamm was wearing an AfD youth hoodie, a group which was banned by German intelligence for being extremist. 

The readings this week were truly fascinating because they offered me new insights into problems I had never fully considered. I was especially captivated by the amount of information, much of it previously unknown, that these journalists were able to uncover. What struck me most, however, was how their methods of embedded reporting transformed the way stories could be told. Rather than observing from a distance, these journalists intentionally placed themselves within the worlds they were trying to understand.

By taking this approach, they were able to uncover details and perspectives that their readership would never have access to otherwise. Embedded reporting reveals information that typical news coverage would not be able to. The proximity, time span, and unique access these journalists had in these spaces allowed them to provide more nuanced insights. 

The articles we were provided this week even showed this form of reporting to be particularly useful in holding governments accountable. Although journalists have been exposing government corruption for decades, embedded reporting allows them to do so with credibility that is hard to achieve otherwise. Accountability has long been missing in many governmental processes, and documenting how these institutions circumvent this process in the first place is important for global safety and prosperity. Each article this week helped show how deep the accountability crisis truly is. 

The Guardian’s work on the Mossad’s effort against the International Criminal Court perfectly illustrates this tension. However, in order to write this story, a diverse set of journalists had to work together to help uncover sensitive information. This begs the question, what responsibility do journalists have when reporting on topics that have national security implications? They must contend with the public’s right to know the information, with the potential consequences that revealing that information would entail. I personally find this to be a challenging task when trying to hold a powerful entity accountable.

Likewise, Caitlin Dickerson’s work on the Darién Gap holds a different kind of power accountable. By following migrants through a notoriously dangerous jungle, Dickerson is able to reveal the personal stories of those making the journey. However, she is also able to expose the systemic failures and policies that put them at risk to begin with. Ultimately, this allows her to provide a link between the suffering migrants endure and the governmental decisions that allowed for it to happen. She is able to expose the consequences that Washington, DC policies have in a different country. Finally, I would be remiss not to note that by going to the location, she is also able to challenge narratives that deny the humanity of those who make the dangerous journey.

Doornbos’s reporting on Ukraine similarly helps show why Ukraine is still worth fighting for. Although coverage on Ukraine is not new, her coverage offers a unique moral lens that is hard to get with other forms of reporting. As governments and international organizations find new ways to break the law, avoid the truth, and crumble under pressure, it is journalism like this that can help expose their immorality. 

Finally, although this form of journalism helps hold institutions accountable, I nonetheless believe embedded journalism can benefit these institutions as well. This form of journalism does not have to function solely as a mechanism for scrutiny. These institutions themselves can gain important insight into public perception. It may even help identify areas where policy and reality clash.

I have been struggling for a while now with how I would write my own profile as currently, among those I have interviewed, many have felt like supporting characters, but not the IT STAR. Reading Cross’s piece first in particular provided me with a clear mentality of the direction I want to go. I was particularly fond of Cross’s reference to writer Lane DeGregory and how she asks prospective subjects of her stories if she could come over first, before asking them where they would like to meet. It is through reading Cross’s piece, as well as Deb’s “Dancing for Their Lives” and Hessler’s “Tales of the Trash” that I have come to understand the greater meaning of setting, particularly in covering detailed profiles.

In Deb’s “Dancing for Their Lives,” she immerses herself in a place she is unfamiliar with, and a place by the end of the night that she hopes to never return to as “the undertow of despair was too great.” In Hessler’s piece “Tales of the Trash”, he is somewhere familiar, and joins garbage man Sayyid on his trash runs. Deb enters the club as a guest of Um Nour, a woman who has to live off her body to make ends meet. However, Deb does not just stay alongside Um Nour the entire night, she pivots and makes friends with Abeer, another woman whom she initially met in the women’s restroom earlier on in the night and later on dances with. This is in contrast as Hessler doesn’t have to pivot as much as Deb does, as he is able to remain with Sayyid all the time.

Through both of these pieces, I was pleased with how they were able to tie these profile pieces back to the historical context of where they were occurring, Deb’s piece in Damascus, Syria, and Hessler’s piece in Cairo, Egypt. 

I can tell Deb is very observant about how the club is laid out, what particular women are wearing, how the men are behaving? The article is so detailed it’s as if she is writing into a notebook all throughout the night, even while on the dance floor with Abeer.  Yet, while she is paying attention to every nook and crevice of the club, she is also trying to find somewhat of a sense of comfortability or relief, and she achieves that once she realizes her translator, Nezar Hussein, unknowingly is in this club at the same time as her. 

From Deb’s article, because there were different women and men to follow, I was more focused on Deb, the journalist, rather than the subject? Whereas Hessler’s piece I was more focused on the subject, Sayyid. This begs the question that for journalists like myself, so much of writing a story is making sure your subject is the one comfortable and willing to share with you some of the hardest things they’ve experienced? However, how does a journalist have to go about getting a story when they are the ones less comfortable, and it is the subject that has more control. Deb’s piece offers an answer to this question,  showing how discomfort can sharpen a journalist’s eye and deepen empathy,  while Hessler’s illustrates what happens when familiarity allows the subject’s world to unfold more naturally.