Documentary Film Series: Covering Conflict – Journalists on the Ground "Dateline Saigon"

In commemoration of Veterans Day, the Norfolk Library is hosting a short series of documentary films featuring journalists on the ground.

The first film in the series is Dateline Saigon. Narrated by Sam Waterston, the film tells the inspiring story of a small group of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists — David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and the great photojournalist Horst Faas — who fought to report a truth that was vastly different from the rosy White House version during the early years of the Vietnam War. The film screening will be followed by Q&A with Jim Sterba and Frances Fitzgerald. Jim Sterba has been a foreign correspondent, war correspondent, and national correspondent for more than four decades, first for The New York Times and then for The Wall Street Journal. In 1969 and 1970 he reported on the Vietnam war for The New York Times. Author Frances Fitzgerald’s first book, Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972), received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize for history.

The second film in our series No Ordinary Life will be screened on Saturday, November 16, with journalist Cynde Strand in attendance.