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Ep 17 Brian Kelly - Life with the Lens
14 Plays9 months ago
Brian is a veteran news cameraman. He talks with us about pointing his camera at everyone between Saddam Hussein and Brad pitt. One of the Beatles even made him a cup of tea. Brian has covered conflicts and been through intensely dangerous situations, where not everyone always made it back. Brian discusses losing people and the trauma that can come from witnessing what he has.
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Transcript
Intro
Brian Kelly's Diverse Career
00:00:19
Daithi Flannery
Hello and welcome to and welcome to Philosophacory.
00:00:20
brian kelly
Hello.
00:00:24
Daithi Flannery
Today we have a man named Brian Kelly. b Brian is a Montreal-born television news cameraman who has worked for CFCF Global News and CTV in Canada before moving to London, England in 1979, where he has been based ever since.
00:00:39
Daithi Flannery
He's covered a wide variety of news stories in many countries, including some of the worst conflict zones. mostly for ABC, CBS, CTV and CBC. And to today he's here with us to talk about it.
00:00:53
Daithi Flannery
I'm Dahi, this is Philosophicary. Welcome, Brian.
00:00:58
brian kelly
Welcome, thank you very much lovely to be with you.
00:01:01
Daithi Flannery
It's lovely to to have you here to speak with us. um ah you You have a ah long, varied career, but I'm going to start with a question from right in the middle of it.
00:01:12
Daithi Flannery
And it's from our mutual friend, tom And he sent me a message when he found out you'd agreed to do this interview. And I'm just going to read that to you and you can give me the answer.
00:01:23
brian kelly
Okay.
00:01:24
Daithi Flannery
So, oh my God, a memory has just come flooding back. You have to find out something for me. I was in a very dangerous place called Kismayo, South Somalia. We had driven there in the morning and we were to get a plane back to Mogadishu as it was far too dangerous to drive at night.
00:01:41
Daithi Flannery
The plane arrived to pick us up, but the communications hadn't specified that there were four of us and they only had three seats. I volunteered to stay behind. The plane took off and I sat down beside the runway.
00:01:53
Daithi Flannery
No one was around, but I knew the bad guys were out there waiting to come and get me. I was seriously fucked. I sincerely doubted I would make it through the night. Thankfully, I didn't freak out or lose it.
00:02:04
Daithi Flannery
For about an hour, I just sat still, weighing up my options, all of them terrible. Then out of nowhere, this enormous American C-130 Hercules came into land, taxied over to me. The side door opened and out stepped Brian, who said, Hello, darling.
00:02:20
Daithi Flannery
Would you like a lift? The fucker absolutely saved my life. The thing is, it was impossible to talk on the plane because of the noise. And to our surprise, the plane flew straight to an airbase in Kenya, where we immediately ran into bureaucratic problems.
00:02:35
Daithi Flannery
I remember watching the sunset there, and it was so damn beautiful, but I never found out how Brian knew I was on that runway. And how did he persuade the pilot to pick me up? I hadn't thought of it until now, but commandeering a C-130 Hercules is pretty badass.
00:02:49
Daithi Flannery
So could you tell Tom and our listeners how you managed to arrive in that place at that time? And in that ride...
00:02:56
brian kelly
I'll be brief. No, I can't remember.
00:03:00
Daithi Flannery
ah really?
00:03:01
brian kelly
Really.
00:03:02
Daithi Flannery
That just shows how exciting
00:03:03
brian kelly
Total blank.
00:03:04
Daithi Flannery
But that just shows...
00:03:04
brian kelly
Total blank.
00:03:05
Daithi Flannery
how exciting of a life you have
00:03:05
brian kelly
Poor Tom. I do apologize to Tom and to you and your listeners. It's a great start to this.
00:03:12
Daithi Flannery
the
00:03:12
brian kelly
If this may go on like this, what's your next question? It'll probably be the same answer. Sorry, I don't remember.
00:03:19
Daithi Flannery
that's but that just shows
00:03:19
brian kelly
could be Donald Trump. It could be.
00:03:21
Daithi Flannery
That just shows, like, for for me or most people, that would probably be one of the most exciting and memorable scenarios in our life. And you just simply, don't remember that one.
00:03:32
Daithi Flannery
That was a Tuesday, I think, was it? You know?
00:03:38
brian kelly
There is that. I have a lot of gaps in my memory. and i not my you know Listen, but's you know not to slag off Tom at all. but It could be Tom you know remembering another Brian Kelly. There's a lot of us
00:03:54
Daithi Flannery
I don't think there's that many Brian Kellys doing what you've done. Okay.
00:03:58
brian kelly
us. I was very fortunate to be in Dublin when Pope John Paul was there. And i went up to the tent in Phoenix Park where they had the press accreditation.
00:04:05
Daithi Flannery
okay
00:04:10
brian kelly
And I went up to the very, very nice elderly woman and said, good afternoon. My name is Brian Kelly. I'm here to collect my press accreditation. And she said, now you're going to have to help me because I've got 25 Brian Kellys.
00:04:25
Daithi Flannery
Oh, wow.
00:04:25
brian kelly
What country are you from? And I said, ah Canada. And she said, that'll help a little, a little,
00:04:32
Daithi Flannery
Oh, God.
00:04:35
brian kelly
So, yeah, but anyway, that's a great story, and I wish I could help Tom, but no, i am that was so pretty that was that whole Somalia scene was very wild, very wild and very dangerous.
00:04:40
Daithi Flannery
OK. OK.
00:04:48
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, I imagine it was. Around what year would that have been?
00:04:52
brian kelly
I knew you'd ask a question like that. In mid-'90s, I think, ah the ah there had been a civil war in Somalia, and i think it was NATO, or I guess maybe the UN agreed to go in and try and stop the civil war.
00:05:06
brian kelly
So Americans went in and Canadian troops went in, which is which was where I was there. And there was just a lot of... oh nasty people with guns who and completely lawless, completely lawless.
00:05:23
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:05:24
brian kelly
ah The annual bad things happen later, but people were very quite early on after the crews arrived, the guys on the street realized that they stole your camera.
00:05:39
brian kelly
you know, CNN was the first someone stole their camera and then went to CNN and said, if you want your camera back, it's $2,000. two thousand dollars And they said, oh yeah, absolutely. And gave them $2,000.
00:05:50
brian kelly
So suddenly the word went out everyone's running around trying to grab your camera because it's an easy $2,000.
00:05:51
Daithi Flannery
wow Yeah.
00:05:56
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:05:57
Daithi Flannery
Okay. Yeah.
00:05:58
brian kelly
Yeah. yeah
00:05:59
Daithi Flannery
That's a, that's a lot of money in a place like that, I guess.
00:06:02
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:06:02
Daithi Flannery
It is.
00:06:02
brian kelly
It's yes incredible amount of money in a place like that.
00:06:04
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. it's It's a lot of money to me too. Who am I kidding? But,
00:06:06
brian kelly
Yeah.
Dangers and Risks in Journalism
00:06:08
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:06:08
Daithi Flannery
um
00:06:08
brian kelly
And so we really got around that kind of by having to then you had everyone had to hire some not so bad guys to fight off the bad guys. Right. And so they became you when you traveled, you traveled with four or five Somalis with AK-47s to, you know, to hopefully fight off the other people or to at least, you know, make it a standoff enough that you could get away.
00:06:34
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:06:34
Daithi Flannery
Wow. Wow. um you as You've, as you're talking there, you've had a front row seat to some of the world's most like volatile and historic events.
00:06:46
Daithi Flannery
is Is that what you were aiming at or what first pulled you towards the camera? Did you say, I want to see the craziest stuff going on all over the world?
00:06:55
brian kelly
I'm not entirely certain, but the family I grew up in Montreal was quite dysfunctional. My father had a lot of problems and he was violent.
00:07:09
brian kelly
i think that i mean I think that's a situation with a lot of your listeners can relate to. It happens in a lot of families. so
00:07:21
brian kelly
first thing was trying to escape. ah first The first time I tried to run away from home, I was five years old. And my brother, who's two years older than me, said, oh, you're five years old.
00:07:34
brian kelly
How far do you think you're going to get? You know, you got to.
00:07:39
Daithi Flannery
Wait till you're seven. like
00:07:40
brian kelly
Yeah, I got. Yeah. yeah I had a I had a paper bag with a sandwich and an apple and banana in it and a chocolate bar. And I was going to go. So some of it was just getting away from home.
00:07:51
brian kelly
And then I think what happened was that um I found dangerous situations It felt, I just felt like I fit it in.
00:08:04
brian kelly
And I'm not, ah you know, I'm not a, I'm not ah an action man at all. You know, I don't do sports. I don't like, I don't like physically being hurt. well All that. But I certainly felt an attraction to be in places that were were dangerous.
00:08:23
brian kelly
Right. And growing up in months in in months and so when I fell into a job at CFCF in Montreal, one of the big news events happened was that separatist groups kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner and a member of the local government.
00:08:23
Daithi Flannery
I don't.
00:08:38
brian kelly
And Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father, declared martial law. They didn't know how big these groups were.
00:08:49
brian kelly
So there were troops on the street and the and the cameraman at the local station I was working all wanted to you know be there when the moment happened that they either found the bodies or these guys got rescued.
00:09:05
brian kelly
And so I would do my regular job in the station and then I'd join a cameraman and we'd go racing around it. you know, crazy speeds through red lights with, you know, guns and cops and soldiers and it. I thought it was great.
00:09:21
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:09:21
brian kelly
It's a real adrenaline rush, adrenaline rush.
00:09:22
Daithi Flannery
And the
00:09:27
Daithi Flannery
ah
00:09:27
brian kelly
And yeah, and i I think it just it somehow satisfied some need for that, you know, to to to be in a dangerous situation and and get through it.
00:09:41
brian kelly
And also to, I think the camera part of it was, you know, growing up at home, you know, I kept my eyes shut. know, I kept my eyes shut when my father was beating my mother, right?
00:09:57
brian kelly
So being out there with a camera, looking at everything, that was a way of getting or, you know, countering that.
00:10:06
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:10:06
brian kelly
countering
00:10:07
Daithi Flannery
It was rebelling in a way. Yeah. face
00:10:10
brian kelly
Just before we started, this Tom sent me a message, said, don't blame me if he makes you cry.
00:10:21
brian kelly
He's bigger than me. I can't do anything to help you.
00:10:27
Daithi Flannery
Well, I can, I can assure you that's not my intent, for but, but some of the, some of the things you've seen in the world,
00:10:30
brian kelly
No, no. Yeah.
00:10:33
Daithi Flannery
um
00:10:34
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:10:35
Daithi Flannery
It wouldn't be it would be them.
00:10:35
brian kelly
And I, you know, I'm not, mr i'm ah you know, I'm not a combat cameraman. You know, I'm not a high, right you know, I'm not a high, you know, I fell into those situations. But, you know, there's lots i lots of other people I know, cameramen I know, you know, who really, really pursued it, know, who wanted always to go with or angry if they weren't sent to the war zone immediately.
00:11:00
brian kelly
I kind of went because you get it you get an assignment and you and you decide to go.
00:11:07
Daithi Flannery
Okay. So why would, if there was all these other cameramen that were vying to go and you, were you not vying to go or why would they have chosen you above these other guys at that time?
00:11:08
brian kelly
You accept
00:11:19
brian kelly
Well, sometimes it's just a situation. i know i had a I had a contract with
00:11:28
brian kelly
once I got to London. Well, that was kind of the remit is when anything happened, you had to go. And, you know, there were I worked with with producers who weren't so keen on dangerous places.
00:11:35
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
00:11:41
brian kelly
And so when, you know, they were told to their next assignment was Bosnia, and they declined it and they they were rather quickly, they fine they found other positions for them because it was kind of yeah considered if you're in that position if you were in that job, then you should be always always ready to to go and and sometimes do
00:11:54
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
00:12:05
brian kelly
incredibly stupid things. I mean, but the I remember in in when I was still based in Montreal, the nuclear accident happened at Mile Island in the States.
00:12:18
brian kelly
And I had a friend, and a reporter who was based in Washington at the time, and his bosses in Toronto said, you know, go, go, go, go. go And he said, i think we should sort of wait for a moment and figure her out, you know, are we...
00:12:35
brian kelly
Is there a nuclear meltdown happening? Is there radiation? should be And they were furious with it. Furious with it.
00:12:41
Daithi Flannery
Wow.
00:12:42
brian kelly
Yeah, I know. And it's like, come on. you know i know You're sitting behind a desk. I'm going to be radiated. So yeah, just so yeah they're not always not always the the something that happens to people when they get behind a desk that they forget.
00:12:50
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:13:03
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:13:03
brian kelly
I think fairly quickly, if they ever experienced him.
00:13:06
Daithi Flannery
And do you find that that that ah there isn't um due respect for the people who are out there getting the images?
00:13:14
brian kelly
um ah sometimes Sometimes I think what happens, I think there is a um
00:13:22
brian kelly
ah there is of a sense that people who go to these crazy places are crazy. you know, because normally you wouldn't do that. Why? Why would you do that?
00:13:34
brian kelly
Why would you? Why? Why would you go?
00:13:37
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:13:38
brian kelly
Why would you volunteer to go to a war zone? if You know, if, if you if you if it was a way out of it, if you didn't have to go? And,
00:13:51
brian kelly
And I, you know, Tom and I, I met Tom and Tom very kindly drove across Ireland when I was visiting a friend and we spent some time at Dublin airport. And, you know, he, he, he reminded me that it was in the eighties.
00:14:07
brian kelly
It's a very small group of people, you know, you'd be, you know, we, we, we'd be in Belfast with all the rioting and the hunger strikes going on and all that. And you, you know, in the, you'd,
00:14:18
brian kelly
borrow the Europa, you'd borrow across the road at the crown. Gosh, I miss the crown.
00:14:24
Daithi Flannery
you
00:14:24
brian kelly
there you know But there'd be this small group of people. Hey, Bill, how are you? Haven't seen you, Bobo. And then a month later, you'd be in Beirut, and it'd be mostly the same people doing it.
00:14:36
brian kelly
And, you know, it became, i think it became an addicted way of
Military and Media Relations
00:14:44
brian kelly
life, you know. We all wanted to do it. We all You know, it just became normal.
00:14:49
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, I guess you had you had your new you had your new sense of family too, I suppose, as well, because you were you were almost traveling with all the same people.
00:14:49
brian kelly
And it's not normal. And it's not normal.
00:14:55
brian kelly
but Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
00:14:59
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:15:00
brian kelly
I had a lovely friend in London who was working for CNN, and he ended up in Beirut and during one of the conflicts.
00:15:12
brian kelly
And I was sitting in our newsroom at Canadian television and I was walking watching the feed came in and he was out at a stadium and it just, it was just explosions everywhere.
00:15:28
brian kelly
And my first thought was, wanna go, wanna be with him because somehow being together is gonna make you safe.
00:15:41
brian kelly
Did I mention i was stupid?
00:15:43
Daithi Flannery
ah No, but we're starting to get that.
00:15:45
brian kelly
ah sort of You know, if there's a you know give event you feel like, well, if we're all in this together.
00:15:46
Daithi Flannery
i'
00:15:53
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:15:53
brian kelly
so that's So kind of like jumping ahead, I'll jump ahead with my story here. the I had the opportunity, which I took, to cross the Atlantic on the diesel electric submarine from Barrow-Infurness to Halifax, two weeks on board a submarine, right?
00:16:10
Daithi Flannery
Wow.
00:16:11
brian kelly
And I loved every minute of it.
00:16:15
Daithi Flannery
And how did you get that opportunity?
00:16:15
brian kelly
And, well, the what had happened is that there had been in Somalia, well at the same time Tom was there, there had been a terrible incident with the Canadian Army.
00:16:26
brian kelly
Kids were stealing things from soldiers. They'd have their base and they'd set up perimeter points and be a soldier elder on his own. And there'd be kids swarming around him, stealing this, stealing that and everything. And they people got very upset with him.
00:16:41
brian kelly
And there was within the Canadian military in their parachute regiment, a tiny but hardcore of white supremacists. And they grabbed one of these Somali kids and they tortured and beat him to death.
00:16:58
Daithi Flannery
Jesus.
00:16:58
brian kelly
And that whole story came out. ah It looked very bad for the military. The Canadian government disbanded the regiment. This is the elite regiment. Can imagine the British Army disbanding the SAS?
00:17:12
brian kelly
that level of it, right? So there was a lot of friction between the media and the military and Canadian Broadcasting, one of the executives was looking at ways that when talking to the military about ways we they could do stories that spun a more positive thing that showed, you know, showed something better. And the Canadian government had purchased from the British, navy from the Brits for decommissioned diesel electric submarines.
00:17:44
brian kelly
Sent Canadian sub-mariners over to Barrow-Infurness to help help with the refit and and then yeah get them delivered home. And so that came up as an idea that and the initial idea was, well, how long would you need on board to do your story? And it was like, well, three days maybe?
00:18:04
brian kelly
And he said, oh, okay, well, we could do that. So we could get, you could, we could, you could help you could chopper someone out from Halifax and to the Atlantic about three days out and they'd be winched down on to the deck of the submarine.
00:18:18
brian kelly
And the sea wasn't too, or if you want, if you had, he may have said two people you didn't really need, you can just put them on board in Barrow Inferness and see them two weeks later.
00:18:25
Daithi Flannery
Wow. Yeah.
00:18:31
Daithi Flannery
oh
00:18:31
brian kelly
And there was a very good friend of mine, a journalist who has he's written books about the Canadian military and everything. And he jumped at the possibility and they threw it my way. And I said, yeah, it looks fantastic. I'd love to do that.
00:18:46
brian kelly
It's such a unique experience. And and I talking about um camaraderie, you know, you're ah you know, you're you're on ah you're on a submarine.
00:18:49
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:18:56
brian kelly
If you're on a surface boat and something goes wrong, you know, well, you lower boats off the side and you, you know, if you're in the submarine, you're all in it together, you know, you're not going anywhere.
00:19:08
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:19:11
brian kelly
You're all in it together. And, you know, and if someone fucks up, you know, you're all going to be in trouble. So there's a real sense of, of closeness and, and, and all that.
00:19:27
brian kelly
lovely black humor that military people get into. And I think journalists as well, you're in a strict tense situation, you know, you'll something else will come by.
00:19:36
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:19:38
brian kelly
So they were funny. They were terribly funny people, terribly funny people.
00:19:41
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:41
brian kelly
I know. And, you know, jokes and and tricks on people and, you know, just winding you up the day before we landed in Halifax after two weeks together.
00:19:54
brian kelly
The captain says to me, and and Dan Bjornest in the reporter, he said, you know, there's a tradition when you've been at sea that there's two things. First of all, there's no limit on beer anymore.
00:20:05
brian kelly
There's normally limit. Last night, you know, you don't want see people, but everyone can have as much beer as you want. And we all get naked.
00:20:16
brian kelly
And I looked at him and I said, let me guess something here. And visitors on the boat get naked first. And he said, oh, you're catching on, aren't They were winding it up.
00:20:30
brian kelly
But it was you know it was um it was a dangerous place to be. And ah my wife I met my wife at Canadian Broadcasting in London. She worked for ITN News for a number of years. She knows the business. She knows everything else.
00:20:47
brian kelly
And she's this very clever woman. woman apart from marrying me, she's very clever. And she, the the year after I went across the but across the Atlantic on the Windsor, the next year, the the next boat that sailed, there was a fire on board.
00:21:07
brian kelly
And we were in the kitchen, eight o'clock in the morning, BBC Radio 4 on. And the lead story was, there's been a small fire on a Canadian submarine off the coast of Scotland.
00:21:18
brian kelly
And I said, oh there's no such thing as a small fire on a submarine.
00:21:23
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, yeah.
00:21:25
brian kelly
That's dangerous. And she very rarely speaks crossly to me, but she said, you don't have to tell me that a submarine is dangerous. and and we had a good conversation about that afterwards, and she had not really told me before, but that two weeks when I was on that boat was worse than being in a war zone, because even in a war zone, if something had happened to her or the children or her parents, you know, she could have called ABC News and said, get a hold of Brian and in in Lebanon, and there's something happened, and then, you know,
00:22:02
brian kelly
submarine, you know, what's she going to do? Call up someone at the Canadian Navy and they're going to, so it was a thought.
00:22:05
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:22:11
brian kelly
She had to endure, you know, every dinner party for almost still. Someone will say, what was the most amazing thing you ever did? two weeks on a submarine and I'd start telling them rude stories about things we did and things that went wrong, you know.
00:22:30
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:22:31
brian kelly
we had tourf We had to surface because so many things were broken on it. Sonar was broken, radar was broken, there was a fin that was stuck. And they so, submariners got up on the casing, we got up into the conning tower and, you know, could film.
00:22:47
brian kelly
and that And it had taken so long to do the refit and barrel in Furness that they'd formed a hockey team. And one of the submariners had his hockey kit. And using his Canadian ingenuity, got onto the casing and used his hockey stick to whack the fin and release the fin.
00:23:06
brian kelly
And it was all, you know, here we go, here we go.
00:23:09
Daithi Flannery
whatever works in them situations I guess
00:23:11
brian kelly
but whatever works in that situation. And we you can cut this out if it's too rude. But so afterwards, they all get down below and everyone's gathered around the captain and saying, right, captain, we've got the sonar working again.
00:23:16
Daithi Flannery
no
00:23:23
brian kelly
We got this working and again. And Jimmy whacked the fin and it's all going, you know, and everyone's going to. And the one of the executive officers says, okay, okay, we're, you know, we did well here, but let's not go sucking our own dicks on this one.
00:23:38
brian kelly
And he looked over at me and said, were you rolling on that? I said, yeah, not only was I rolling, I think I've got the title for our documentary. But we ended the that wasn't the title. The title ended up being Summoning the Dragon, which is what they call when they have to test to see if the boat's going to go to its maximum depth.
00:24:05
brian kelly
Well,
00:24:05
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
00:24:07
brian kelly
Right, and and that was we weren't allowed, asked us not to film, even though they figured the Russians knew, but there's a gauge and they can tell what the depth is and that when it gets down close, that's when you go down and with there's so much pressure that the hull starts shrinking and making, our po oh and they call it summoning the dragon.
00:24:35
Daithi Flannery
Oh, because the noise. OK.
00:24:37
brian kelly
noise and the noise, the noise. And they tell you stories that sometimes they when they do that test, there'll be a rivet that'll get loose and go flying across and hurt.
00:24:48
brian kelly
me i that that was you know they're all It's They in command particularly
00:24:50
Daithi Flannery
ah has to be That has to be a scary noise. yeah
00:24:56
brian kelly
they liked the sucking in command particularly wanted to know, was interested in the thresher of the accident where American submarine lost the power to surface and this kept sinking deeper and deeper into a part of the ocean that eventually just, you know, it's just go.
00:25:17
brian kelly
And he, was very interested to know if how he would react, knowing that it's coming, because you on the black box recording, you can just hear him calm, calmly reading off the depths.
00:25:34
brian kelly
And he wondered if he would be able to do that.
00:25:39
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:25:39
brian kelly
and can i And I would say, all right, but you don't, don't, don't try to do this with me on board. Okay. Don't, don't, don't, don't go there.
00:25:46
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:25:48
Daithi Flannery
This is a test you have next
Media Bias and Censorship
00:25:50
Daithi Flannery
week.
00:25:50
brian kelly
Next week when we're off.
00:25:51
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, I get it.
00:25:52
brian kelly
We're off. yeah Yeah.
00:25:54
Daithi Flannery
you You mentioned there that the Somalian boy that got tortured and killed and that then um you were asked, could you do some more positive stories on the military?
00:26:06
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:26:08
Daithi Flannery
Is there much of that that goes on? I mean, is there much influence from the military and kind of towards the media saying, can you not show us in a bit of a better light?
00:26:18
Daithi Flannery
And how much does that happen?
00:26:22
brian kelly
Well, i think yeah I think there's, you know, military police, there's alt new there's always going to be friction, partly because because, you know, they can spend 364 days doing a wonderful job and they mess up and that's what's going to make the news, right?
00:26:44
Daithi Flannery
OK.
00:26:44
brian kelly
You know, you're not going to, you know, the
00:26:44
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:47
brian kelly
you're you're not going to see ah you don't get that many positive stories out. I remember there are you know, there are programs that specifically go, yeah, what a wonderful job everyone's doing and once we'll sign up, do things but there's a that there's there's a um ah there's ah friction, there's friction, because it's said and it's also a different culture.
00:27:01
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:27:09
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:27:12
brian kelly
You know, it's it's it's a very different culture. I mean, i'm going back to the submarine, I think, hey, we were very fortunate that they allowed us to come on board and very fortunate that the captain said, look, I don't have time to supervise you guys. None of my people were too busy, so you know, sailing this boat. So we're going to, you know, you do anything you want to. Don't film the depth today, but anything else you want to do, you just do.
00:27:36
brian kelly
Some of the officers didn't agree with that, but it worked. And, you know, the early on, I found out that the the down where there was one part of the boat that they go down to and they'd have a smoke.
00:27:54
brian kelly
When I found that, I said, guys, hey, I'm not going to show you. I don't have no interest in going down to a smoky room on board a submarine and the air is already.
00:28:07
brian kelly
I said, I'm not. And other than that, I I'm self-censor here. I don't need to show that. And because I think if we did show that, there'll be someone standing up in Parliament saying this is unhealthy and they shouldn't, smoking should be banned. And then you're, you know, the one little pleasure you have on here will go.
00:28:26
brian kelly
And I think that kind of, look, we're, know, we're not here to, to expose any things. We're not, you know, we're just trying to show you guys doing your jobs, help, you
00:28:36
Daithi Flannery
that's that's it that That would be now definitely like something you wouldn't bother exposing. You're just getting people into trouble kind of stuff like that.
00:28:43
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:28:43
Daithi Flannery
But is is is there any ah larger things that happen, like more meaningful things that happen where the press might say, ah we're not going to expose that, even though it might have a real impact?
00:28:54
brian kelly
I don't, personally, I don't, i don't have any, I can't really speak to that because I don't have any, I don't have any direct experience of that.
00:28:59
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:29:02
brian kelly
Yeah.
00:29:03
Daithi Flannery
Did you ever, did you ever, um
00:29:03
brian kelly
they
00:29:06
Daithi Flannery
did you ever take material and see it being misused or misrepresented in the media? what The point I'm trying to get here is there's so much now about fake news and all this kind of stuff.
00:29:16
brian kelly
Yeah. No.
00:29:19
Daithi Flannery
So I just want to get from somebody behind the scenes, are are we getting a real view of the news?
00:29:19
brian kelly
no
00:29:25
Daithi Flannery
is Is it all filtered?
00:29:27
brian kelly
Well, you know, for some news organizations, they, you know, they thrive on disinformation. They have an agenda and they go, you know, I think, I think, honestly believe that in here in the UK, the BBC and ITN and Sky really work really hard, to be honest about what they're doing.
00:29:50
brian kelly
They work really, really hard to do that. And they have all kinds of checks and balance. They don't always get it right. And there may be a bias built in somehow, but they mostly get it very right. And know I've only...
00:30:04
brian kelly
um I personally have not had any experience of what I've done being distorted. i've had I've had people down my neck questioning.
00:30:17
brian kelly
i did I was in is Israel ah when they and Lebanon when the Israelis invaded 1982, working with eighty two yeah working with ah
00:30:33
brian kelly
new big tv star heraldo rivero he's a big character in these things right and uh we came across an israeli tank that was firing someone and uh we wanted to do an on camera and we there and um you could see that it was taking 30 seconds between the tank firing for it to reload and fire again
00:30:37
Daithi Flannery
Oh, yeah.
00:30:59
brian kelly
So we set up, tank fired and let the sound drop a bit. Geraldo did a 20 second oh on camera commentary and then the tank fired off again.
00:31:13
brian kelly
Oh, fucking hell, man. New York was, you know, did Geraldo tell the tank to fire? You know, did you?
00:31:23
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:31:24
brian kelly
And I had to know we didn't. That's the way we did it. in And then there was another time we were working with actually Keith Graves from the BBC. I ended up just teaming up with him. A group of us went into the village and the Israelis had been there.
00:31:38
brian kelly
And there were is there were, they left behind ration tins in the middle of the street. And I got up, I put my camera on the ground and did a very, you know, arty pull focus on these Israelis, you know.
00:31:52
brian kelly
And the Israelis denied they had been in the village. Right. And I had evidence that they had been in the building. And then yeah it was OK. Well, have you, you know, did you have Israeli rations and put them in? them Could they have been staged? for they yeah yeah And you get that.
00:32:11
brian kelly
and Another one in Beirut, the the Israelis occupied the Russian embassy.
00:32:12
Daithi Flannery
Okay. Yeah.
00:32:18
brian kelly
Right. And but denied it at first. OK. But I was sent out to the Russian embassy and there were Israelis all around and everything. And I followed them into the into the courtyard, into the gate. And then then I went to go into a room and they said, no, no you're not coming in. you're coming But you know there were Israelis within the grounds of the Russian embassy.
00:32:40
brian kelly
Well, I got that footage back.
00:32:40
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:32:42
brian kelly
And, you know, New York just wouldn't believe it. And I was, you know, the correspondent was not talking to him and I was saying, just step away look at the videotape, you can see it, you know.
00:32:47
Daithi Flannery
They wouldn't believe the footage.
00:32:53
brian kelly
And the Israeli embassy in Washington was telling the Americans that no, they weren't there. And then it turned out the story they had was they had not actually sat at the ambassador's desk.
00:33:06
brian kelly
Okay. And therefore, they weren't there.
00:33:10
Daithi Flannery
Okay. Oh, they found a technicality, so.
00:33:11
brian kelly
yeah i you know I may be innocent, but i mostly I've dealt with people trying to to get the truth out. ah did have i yeah
00:33:21
Daithi Flannery
but who
00:33:22
brian kelly
friend of mine was working for an organization and he had interviewed, and it was ah it was Americans living in Beirut at the time of the Israeli invasion, and they had interviewed American women there there and they One of the women, the quote she said was, I'm very afraid. I'm very afraid the Americans are going to do something really stupid here and and make this war much worse than what it needs to be.
00:33:51
brian kelly
Right. And what the organization put on air was, I'm very afraid.
00:34:00
brian kelly
And he was furious.
00:34:00
Daithi Flannery
Okay. Hmm.
00:34:03
brian kelly
partly because the next day this woman came into the office trying to lynch someone because she said, you know, how dare you distort what I was saying. Someone decided it was it was a better clip or hadn't listened to it. I don't know.
00:34:18
brian kelly
No, I think, well, I think mostly, you know, I wouldn't, you Fox News is rather different. And I have a very good friend who has a wife and,
00:34:31
brian kelly
three kids and he works for Fox, but he does it with some reluctance because they do. I think they intentionally distort things.
00:34:40
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, yeah, I think i think
00:34:45
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, so Fox News, I think Britain has GB News now, which is somewhat somewhat similar, maybe not as extreme.
00:34:48
brian kelly
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:34:51
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:34:52
brian kelly
Yeah, I don't watch. I don't, you know, I don't watch I don't watch it, so I don't know.
00:34:57
Daithi Flannery
the ah
00:34:57
brian kelly
i've i've seen them I've seen them out on the street a couple. I've just been in London and seen them out on the street and talking to people. And, you know, like you can tell they have and they tell you can tell they have an agenda.
00:35:12
brian kelly
But then, you know, leave you know you know maybe, you know, being sympathetic about old ladies, is that's maybe an agenda as well, you know. i'm
00:35:22
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:35:22
brian kelly
You know, st
00:35:22
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't know. I think
00:35:25
brian kelly
not Not hating people is, you know, being tolerant of immigrants. That's an attitude, you know, that's, that's, you know.
00:35:32
Daithi Flannery
I know, but that' that's ah that's ah a democratic agenda. Like, you know, if we're living in a democratic size society, it's of tolerance and acceptance and, you know, for the moment.
00:35:38
brian kelly
but For the moment. I think you can't say this anymore. You can't say that any anymore than to say for the moment. For the moment we're living in a democratic society, you know, dealing with some crazy stuff.
00:35:45
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, unfortunately.
00:35:49
Daithi Flannery
you've you've you've been You've been in a lot of ah war zones, a lot of conflict zones, um a lot of places where government has broken down.
00:35:59
brian kelly
yeah Yeah.
00:36:00
Daithi Flannery
Do you see similarities now between what's happening in those places, whether it be individual attitudes or kind of a ah cultural zeitgeist taking hold? Do you see similarities from what's happening now in the West, mainly in America, with the rise the right wing, you know?
00:36:15
brian kelly
Oh, yeah, definitely. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, I, you know, I, you know, we, When I see the way ice is operating on the streets of America, I mean, it's almost worse than, you know, I've seen another in other, you know, I went to went to the Soviet Union a lot during communism, you know, and, you know, they yeah you'd you know if there were if there was a demonstration, people would just come in and be arrested, dragged away, and you had no idea what happened to them. And you we know Putin, you know you know, we know if you want to survive
00:36:51
brian kelly
in the In the Soviet Union and you're opposing Putin, first of all, you can't live anywhere above the second floor because you're going to have trouble and you're going to have all kinds of nasty stuff. And I see the way they are yeah dragging people off the street.
00:37:07
brian kelly
And i there was something and i and I said, yes, it makes sense. so so And it was like, OK, so you're standing on the street and there's a 20 year old woman standing beside you and a white van pulls up and four guys in combat gear get out.
00:37:21
brian kelly
and grab her and throw her into the back of the bed and you're supposed to do nothing. That's okay. Now there's no IDs that their faces are covered.
00:37:33
brian kelly
There's no, there's no license plate, no markings on the vehicle. And that's okay. i mean, you know, cause you know, and it's all, they're all wearing stuff that, you know, you and I can buy on Amazon in, you know, and get it all going, know?
00:37:39
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, there's a lot of questions about what
00:37:47
brian kelly
So no, it's really, really bad. And, uh,
00:37:52
brian kelly
And although, you know, the, you know, threatening closing down stations, you know, threatening to arrest journalists if they criticize all those things are, you know, are totalitarian. They're they're really had was very lucky I got just before the first Gulf War as part of an ABC team and we went and interviewed Saddam Hussein.
00:38:16
brian kelly
Right. long interview with Diane Sawyer and Saddam Hussein. And at one point Diane says to said to him, you know, youre you you arrest people who oppose you, you know, you put them in jail.
00:38:31
brian kelly
And he said, well, yes, well, you do that in America too. And she said, no, actually, she said, no, actually, if you're really good at criticizing the president, they give you your own TV show.
00:38:45
brian kelly
which ain't the case anymore, you know, not the case anymore.
00:38:47
Daithi Flannery
it's not.
00:38:49
brian kelly
All these, these, you know, and it's, and it's, you know, yeah you know, these, crazy lawsuits where, you know, they sued suing CBS because they didn't use the same clip of an interview in their promo is that in one show as they did in another, it's just standard journalistic practice.
00:39:08
brian kelly
It didn't change what she had said, you know, da and so, but he got 15 million, $16 million dollars out of it because he's threatening the parent company to use the government to not allow them to do a merger that they want to do.
00:39:24
brian kelly
So it's it's it's, you know, it's thuggish.
00:39:28
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:39:28
brian kelly
It's mafia. And that's, you know, they that's the way totalitarian societies work, you know. I yeah remember filming, we were doing a story about anthrax in the Soviet Union. There was an anthia.
00:39:47
brian kelly
We ended up filming around a military base surreptitiously and and we were doing it on camera and and I saw a military vehicle way down at the end of the street.
00:39:59
brian kelly
like um Hey, you know, got to get this done. Right. And my producer was perhaps less experienced than me. So what they can't touch us.
00:40:11
brian kelly
I said, what do you mean? said, no, don't have the right to touch us. We're allowed. I said, well, you know, yeah, exactly.
00:40:18
Daithi Flannery
you know Do you know where you are kind of time?
00:40:20
brian kelly
this You know, you're not in, you know, what's that line? You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. You know, this is, you know, they hit they can do anything they want to and we will just disappear and, you know, we will, there's not that.
00:40:25
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. yeah
00:40:33
brian kelly
And you get a sense in the States now that that's, you know.
00:40:38
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:40:38
brian kelly
Very possible, very possible.
00:40:40
Daithi Flannery
and And with the...
00:40:40
brian kelly
It's, I mean, it'll change, you know, things go up and down, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we had Obama and Michelle Obama and all that, you know, and then it's, you know, it turns, yeah.
00:40:52
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:40:56
Daithi Flannery
Hopefully it comes back
Ethical Dilemmas in Journalism
00:40:56
Daithi Flannery
around. um When you... You've been a professional now. When when you look at the the output that's coming from news stations and reporters, particularly in America, are you seeing a change, um like a self-censorship going on in in the reporting output that's coming out? Are you like, oh you you wouldn't have said that last year. You might have said that differently.
00:41:19
Daithi Flannery
Like, are they not attacking Trump like they should be in some ways? Hmm.
00:41:24
brian kelly
Um, uh, yeah, I think so. It's, i mean, it's, it's, it's very, i think it is difficult to, to document and I'm not a you know, media analyst or anything, but, you know, I, you know, sometimes when I go online and I see, you know, you know, I see stories and I'm thinking, hang on a second, you, you, where's your, you know,
00:41:49
brian kelly
you know, how can you do a story that about Trump going to Texas to look at the floods and and not talk about Doge and must cuts to FEMA and cuts to the weather service?
00:42:02
brian kelly
And, you know, how do you only do, you know, and you're, you know, there and it has to be, you know, the you know people have been punished severely for criticizing Trump.
00:42:04
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:42:16
brian kelly
So it's got to be you know,
00:42:18
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:42:19
brian kelly
people saying, look, just you know back off a bit. yeah like alphabet and then you know um' um a And I haven't been able to verify yet.
00:42:24
Daithi Flannery
um I'm thinking of the
00:42:28
brian kelly
I saw a story that the FBI was saying to reporters, back off on this Epstein story, or you're going to be denied access denied access to to the administration. You won't be able to do your jobs because you you know you need to be able to, if you're defense correspondent, you have to get information from the Department of Defense. So if you're as well in doing that story, talking about Epstein, then you're you're going to be in trouble.
00:42:55
brian kelly
And, you know, there's you know definitely that level of censorship going on.
00:43:02
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, and there's the sacking of someone like Terry Moran.
00:43:06
brian kelly
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, and I, you know, I've worked with Terry.
00:43:07
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:43:09
brian kelly
He's a wonderful, very talented reporter and very, uh, uh, a very moral person.
00:43:17
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, he seems to be, yeah.
00:43:17
brian kelly
No, uh, very strong sense of what's right. Uh, uh, uh, Tom says you might be able to talk to him later.
00:43:25
Daithi Flannery
ah Possibly, possibly in the future, yeah.
00:43:27
brian kelly
be wonderful. Be wonderful.
00:43:28
Daithi Flannery
were
00:43:28
brian kelly
I mean, we're, what we all want to know is, and you know, he's not a ah you know,
00:43:29
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, he's a great guy.
00:43:33
brian kelly
And he's talked a little, he's talked some about about it, but what motivated him to do those, actually do know those posts that got him fired.
00:43:43
Daithi Flannery
ah Yes.
00:43:44
brian kelly
And it wasn't, and I don't know, i have no idea, but you know he's not a drinker. you know Well, he wasn't off his head.
00:43:50
Daithi Flannery
No, he wasn't drinking at the time. I listened i listened to him explain on another podcast that...
00:43:53
brian kelly
I don't think he does drugs or anything. So I think it was a pretty calculated thing. And it is just his his sense of duty and morality just reached a point where he had just had enough and he just thought to hell was this.
00:44:11
brian kelly
um You know, I have to believe, I have to believe that he understood that the circum, the consequences of doing it could be quite severe.
00:44:13
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, I think
00:44:22
Daithi Flannery
that that that is a big question whether he understood the circumstances or the consequences that that were that were going to happen.
00:44:22
brian kelly
Now I,
00:44:27
brian kelly
yeah. And maybe, you know, yeah, maybe, you know, and look, he would have, you know, we have to, we have to figure, we have to,
00:44:28
Daithi Flannery
i mean, um
00:44:35
brian kelly
oh you know, after the interview, the long interview he did with Trump, you know, was, I thought, a very, very good interview, right?
00:44:45
Daithi Flannery
It was a brilliant interview.
00:44:45
brian kelly
It's a brilliant interview.
00:44:46
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:44:48
brian kelly
But, you know, you can imagine ah Trump people not being happy with him at all, right? And so you can imagine he would be
00:45:01
brian kelly
overt pressure, subtle pressure, so you know, just like, ooh, just, you know, can you not just back off a little?
00:45:09
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:45:10
brian kelly
You know, and that's
00:45:10
Daithi Flannery
I wonder if if that interview isn't where where his firing actually began, as in if if from that interview, the sword wasn't hanging above his head waiting for somebody to just let it drop.
00:45:21
brian kelly
No. yeah Well, it was, you know, it's it was going to be difficult. and and And all the other, you know, the Today Show taking, you know, excerpts from it where, you know, he's asking, you know, he asked Trump, what do you what do you think about the Declaration of Independence?
00:45:37
Daithi Flannery
Yes.
00:45:38
brian kelly
And it's pretty obvious he's never read it. he has no fucking idea. Oh, it's a love story. And they cut to Kerry's eyes going, you know, what am I dealing Well, that's...
00:45:51
brian kelly
So, yeah, we don't know.
00:45:53
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, no ah hopefully I do get to talk to Terry about it.
00:45:53
brian kelly
and I don't know. The good thing is but good thing is is that as Terry Moran's on Substack now, so you can, you can you know, i better I don't think his audience will would be as big as what it was on ABC News, but it's freer to say more of what he actually believes to be true.
00:45:56
Daithi Flannery
It'll be good.
00:46:01
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:46:14
Daithi Flannery
Mm-hmm.
00:46:14
brian kelly
And, you know, we've had, you know, we've had yeah, I've, know, that is and i think I think objective journalism is important. It's good to have that standard. And I think that reporters should bear in mind that they you know they're not free to just...
00:46:38
brian kelly
yeah express their opinions. I mean, yeah a good example for me would be Jon Snow was a Channel 4 presenter and for years and years and years.
00:46:46
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:46:48
brian kelly
well his you know um We all know that his sympathies are left wing. yeah But, you know, he but I always thought that he he he walked the line. You know, he walked the line.
00:46:59
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:47:00
brian kelly
So, you know, he so when he was interviewing an Israeli government spokesperson, you know, he nailed them Nail them, nail them, nail them, but with facts, not with, ah you know, abuse, not with vindictiveness, it just with facts, know, and and that's, so you're going to be, yeah, it's all that.
00:47:14
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:47:17
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:47:23
brian kelly
I don't know, I haven't done.
00:47:25
Daithi Flannery
Is is there, when when you're behind the camera, like it we're here talking about the the journalists who are speaking into the camera and the microphones, you're behind the camera, you get to choose where to point it, when to zoom in, when to stop.
00:47:39
brian kelly
yeah
00:47:40
Daithi Flannery
Have you ever faced like ethical decisions there? about what do I point to that? Or look, I'm pointing it over here when the real story is over here, but they're telling me I have to keep a point in here.
00:47:52
brian kelly
Well, I've never been in a situation where they so I have someone telling me don't don't film that. but Well, although
00:47:59
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
00:48:03
brian kelly
the that wasn't quite a news situation. We had been hired by the the home office, a friend and I, to film at a conference in London, the conference against violence, conference to end sexual violence against women.
00:48:21
brian kelly
And so the home office wanted footage of William Haig and her name's a big movie star. Terrible.
00:48:32
brian kelly
Her name's just slipped out of it. It'll come back in a moment to follow them around. And Brad Pitt's partner.
00:48:42
Daithi Flannery
Angelina Jolie.
00:48:43
brian kelly
Thank you very much.
00:48:44
Daithi Flannery
You're welcome.
00:48:44
brian kelly
Angelina Jolie. And so that's what we were doing. And the
00:48:52
brian kelly
they was OK when Angelina Jolie was there for a day or two. And then Brad Pitt joined her. Right. And then they were going to go to different talks and conferences, right? And the people I was working for, the company that was organizing us, said to the Hague's people, you're going to have to figure out how you're going to move these people because it's going to madness. And they said, oh, no, we're fine. They're just going to, well, of course it was. It was just a mob scene when they started walking through the venue, right?
00:49:31
brian kelly
So, and and so Gary Shore, a great cameraman, and I are, you know, are trying to film all this. and And at one point, the two women get knocked over in the crush.
00:49:40
Daithi Flannery
Oh,
00:49:42
brian kelly
And Brad Pitt goes and helps them to get up, you know, great moment for them and gets them up and everything. But when as that was happening and I was filming this, someone from the home office was screaming in my head, don't film that. We don't want that. We'll never show up that. for You know, it looks bad. We're not going to.
00:50:02
brian kelly
there now. And it turned out later that they used my footage in training videos to talk about if you've got important people, how do you move them from one place to another? Because the next day, they, of course, put up barriers and they told everybody, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to go from A to B at one o'clock in the afternoon. And this is the route they'll be going. And they had barriers up and it all went rather smoothly.
00:50:32
brian kelly
But You know, I'll digress just for a moment.
00:50:34
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
00:50:37
brian kelly
They had live cameras all over the, unit and we were the ones who were shooting videotape, but getting into better situations. But our my boss said, look, the arrivals, we got three cameras on the arrivals, but you never know. You know, the links break and everything. So I'd like you to be there and recording some arrivals just in case.
00:50:55
brian kelly
We have it for later. So I go to the arrivals thing and I get my tripod out and I'm inside, but I can see outside and I'm filming cars coming in and I follow a car and up pops William Hague, the foreign minister.
00:51:07
brian kelly
And I've got um nice medium shot and I think, well, it's cool. And I'm following him and then another car pulls up and out comes Angelina Jolady. ah Magic. Pull out to a little looser shot, two shots. And I follow them in the building. I keep my focus.
00:51:22
brian kelly
I change my exposure. They come up to a microphone. They each say a couple of words and then they walk off. And as they walk off, this figure in a suit crosses my frame.
00:51:34
brian kelly
And I think, an asshole youre spoiling my shot and goes away and everything and follow the back of the head and everything and dennna and so and the guy beside me says, oh wow, Brad Pitt, that's amazing.
00:51:50
Daithi Flannery
That was the asshole in the suit.
00:51:50
brian kelly
Not in my picture. Not in my picture. not So, you know, you don't always get it right.
00:51:57
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, yeah. ah is there
00:52:00
brian kelly
but Where are we?
00:52:03
Daithi Flannery
Is there... a When you're out in the field now, and and I'm thinking of conflict zones, um is there is there a measure of danger?
00:52:14
Daithi Flannery
that you'll say, I'm not i'm not going into that shot, that's too dangerous? Or or how how would you assess whether something is too dangerous? Or would you just keep going till you get the shot?
00:52:22
brian kelly
You know, it
00:52:25
brian kelly
it's it really is just an instinct. You know, it's just a sense. And you hopefully are with people who
00:52:33
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:52:37
brian kelly
are also have a keen sense of what's going on. and and And mostly what you try to do is as as you you try to with people you know and trust. and And pretty much everyone agrees on this, that if one person in the team goes, I don't like this, shouldn't be here.
00:53:05
brian kelly
that you should follow that, you know, that you, you know, what you don't want is to be standing around and arguing with each other about whether it's safer, safe or not.
00:53:08
Daithi Flannery
and Okay. Yeah.
00:53:18
brian kelly
Partly because the longer you stay in a place, in theory, it's worse. But there's, I don't think there's any, there's no rules that work all the time.
00:53:30
brian kelly
There's no rules that work all the time.
00:53:31
Daithi Flannery
yeah
00:53:32
brian kelly
And, you know, there are so many stories of, great, amazing, top-of-their-game combat cameraman who'd been killed. And they did nothing wrong.
00:53:45
brian kelly
They just, you know, it's random.
00:53:45
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:53:47
brian kelly
It's random. And people people very much respect, like Alan Pizzi from CBS or Martin Fletcher who NBC in Israel, guys who do have done 100 times more
00:53:48
Daithi Flannery
you
00:54:03
brian kelly
conflict zones that I have will say it's, it's random. You know, could be just you just, know, you can do things that are going to be better if you, you know, avoid doing really stupid things, but actually you can not be doing a stupid thing. And,
00:54:20
brian kelly
and get whacked. you know My good friend Nick Follows with was in and in Lebanon in 83 when the Shuf war was going on and he and his cameraman were filming and the shells seemed to be getting closer so they legged it up over the top of a hill to get to the other side of the hill where it was you know away from the incoming and a mortar landed and Nick got his elbow shattered and you know he just
00:54:49
brian kelly
It's random. It's random. I think. oh
00:54:54
brian kelly
but but good But we look for meaning in things, you know. And anytime I've been or I've been involved myself or friends of mine have been involved or someone's got hurt or worse, the instinct to blame very strong.
00:55:16
brian kelly
oh, they must have done something wrong. Or, you know, the people involved think, well, we, we shouldn't, be we obviously we shouldn't have done that.
00:55:20
Daithi Flannery
or the instinct to blame the person that got hurt.
00:55:25
brian kelly
We shouldn't have done this.
Coping with Trauma and PTSD
00:55:26
brian kelly
we can
00:55:30
brian kelly
It's, uh, approach, appropriating blame is, uh, is, uh, uh, you know, a pretty awful thing. You know, and I i had a terrible, terrible incident, uh, in, uh,
00:55:44
brian kelly
in the Shoof Mountains in 1983, myself and the Canadian correspondent i worked with before. I was then working for ABC. We ended up in in a village for Mata, south of Beirut. That was a Druze village. it was The war was about to break out between the Druze and the Christian forces, and Christians had surrounded the village and the Israelis were kind of keeping them apart and the Israelis pulled out and the Christians attacked.
00:56:17
brian kelly
And Clark was wounded close to his heart. And as we were trying to run out of the village and he told us to leave and we did.
00:56:30
brian kelly
tried to get back to him and we couldn't and he died. And you know if I look back at that and I talk to other people So many people and people, you know, with more lots and lots of experience will, you know, say, oh, I would have never gone to that village.
00:56:47
brian kelly
You were wrong going there in the first place, or you were wrong to do this, or how could you, how could you, and a lot, of obviously, you know, but doing that, you know, the first question would be, well, how could you have left him there?
00:57:01
brian kelly
How can you do that? How could you leave him there? Well, you know, I was, he was convinced, and I was convinced that if we stayed, we'd all die.
00:57:12
brian kelly
And that was, where does that get us?
00:57:12
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:57:14
Daithi Flannery
That was Clark Todd.
00:57:15
brian kelly
no you know? Yeah, it doesn't. So you, yeah. And, ah but there was, you know, a lot of, lot of blame was, and and yeah, a lot of blame from other people, a lot of self blame, you know, lot of self blame.
00:57:28
brian kelly
I really can't really,
00:57:32
brian kelly
I think I'm still messed up by it. It's still a terrible thing to have had to have done. I'm still always going to go, well, could we have carried him out?
00:57:48
brian kelly
and you know I went back to the village some years later, but the driver who was with us was a wonderful, wonderful, brave man. And we looked at the geography of the situation and and said, we couldn't have carried them out.
00:58:00
brian kelly
No, we couldn't have done it. It just wouldn't, you know, it doesn't but that doesn't help much in the end.
00:58:09
Daithi Flannery
no but No, but hindsight is never, it's always 20-20, but it's never right.
00:58:15
brian kelly
No, it's not always 2020.
00:58:18
Daithi Flannery
no
00:58:18
brian kelly
It's always 2020. And it's all the, you know, and the, the only, the, well, the, the The only purpose it can serve in a way is that is is that you learn from it.
00:58:32
brian kelly
You can learn, you know, you make mistakes. Mistakes are positive if you learn from them. Right. And I think, you know, what's happened that happened in 83 now. They don't send people to war zones who haven't had some training, lot of training. Actually, they have to go for a week long.
00:58:52
brian kelly
SAS or Royal Marines, you know, proper military training. What's incoming? What's that going? How do you stop? What? How do you recognize a wound? Where do you, if there's incoming, where do you, duck and you know, and if there's incoming, you don't run around, you know?
00:59:07
Daithi Flannery
Hmm. Yeah.
00:59:08
brian kelly
Yeah, great. Oh, it's incoming. We should try and escape. We'll wait until the shelling stops. But if you're running around and shelling's happening, you're, you're, you're, it's not a good thing to do. Not a good thing to do at all.
00:59:18
Daithi Flannery
That, that'd be everybody's instinct, I guess.
00:59:19
brian kelly
We, none of us have any training. None of us had any training, really. We all been to conflict zones, but you just because you've been doesn't mean you've actually learned anything.
00:59:30
Daithi Flannery
Hmm.
00:59:31
brian kelly
so and So now that so that's you know, now we they at least train people. And and that in theory and but more than train now, they also they people don't go to conflict zones working for big news organizations for without having security with them, without having ex-military people beside them whose job is to assess the risk.
00:59:37
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
00:59:57
brian kelly
And if there is trouble to have fought routes of how to get people out, know, to recognize that I have a great friend, a CBS cameraman who's alive today because the security guy with him recognized that the cameraman was having a heart attack and got him, got him to, uh, uh, got him to hospital in, uh,
01:00:13
Daithi Flannery
wow
01:00:19
brian kelly
where they bagged that my dad got him to a hospital like it's terrible camera was that got him to a in a bad great place and then he got him to a hospital and got you know they and got him treated yeah they by uh they uh the cardiologist was the weekend, the cardiologist was at home, right?
01:00:42
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:00:43
brian kelly
And he, I think it was the interpreter, story i I think it was the interpreter said, okay, this is the way it's going to work. And he calls the cardiologist at home and says, we've had an injury here. And the senior um a cardiologist at the Glasgow infirmary has been wounded, right?
01:01:04
brian kelly
He needs your help. Anyways,
01:01:09
brian kelly
then they turned to my mate who's Scottish and said, listen, you know, if you can talk, tell him you're a cardiologist and I hope he doesn't ask any questions.
01:01:23
Daithi Flannery
whatever works, isn't it?
01:01:23
brian kelly
All right. They patched him up, but you know, it took the, someone really trained in, you know, medical knowledge to spot what was happening. The camera i was just saying, no, I'm just, you I'm feeling stressed.
01:01:35
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. I think that there's a huge amount of luck that comes into all into surviving these, these situations.
01:01:37
brian kelly
Um,
01:01:43
brian kelly
Yeah. yeah
01:01:44
Daithi Flannery
And for, for the, I mean, I was going, I was,
01:01:45
brian kelly
Yeah. Yeah. It's probably the first thing if you're going to go someplace with funny, it's probably the first thing you want to ask them. Are you lucky? Are you lucky? and Are you feeling lucky? You know, don't.
01:01:56
Daithi Flannery
Is there something that you'd see in, say, a newbie and you'd recognize and go, oh, you're only going for one trip. You're not going to like a second one. or Does that ever arise where you can tell?
01:02:09
brian kelly
I can't think of anyone right off the top of my head, but sometimes.
01:02:11
Daithi Flannery
ah Without naming names. Hmm.
01:02:13
brian kelly
No, no, no, no. Yeah, some people are some people are and not know. are not a aware of their environment know And, you know, and they can be, you know, I work with a very, very talented Canadian producer. And, you know, she, you know, get her in an edit suite and she could make magic of all the shit that you had fucked up on. You know, she could pull it together, know.
01:02:38
brian kelly
But in the field, she was, you know, we were we were filming in Bosnia towards the end of the afternoon. And we ended up in an area where there are a lot of drunken people soldiers hanging around.
01:02:56
brian kelly
And they we when we started working, I could yeah just looked around and you know there were all these mean eyes bearing down on us. yeah and And I said, we want to do this quickly.
01:03:12
brian kelly
And it was, why? Well, look around for fuck's sake.
01:03:15
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:03:16
brian kelly
you know Look around. you know and it Because it can turn it can turn on um yeah it can turn on a dime.
01:03:20
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:03:24
brian kelly
can on a dime So you stay and you do you and you do your job and you figure it's going to be okay.
01:03:24
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:03:29
brian kelly
and And sometimes if you're really into it, you're... I went to Baghdad after after the war, second war, and to do a story on the art theft from the Baghdad Museum. from Generally speaking, yeah everyone was looting everything they could get their hands on.
01:03:50
brian kelly
yeah And we were in downtown Baghdad. And we had brought a mini jib with us, you know, this arm that you so you can do, know, nice cinematic tracking shots.
01:04:01
brian kelly
And we'd set it up in front of the museum. And we were getting it all lined up. And there was a whoop, whoop, gunfire.
01:04:14
brian kelly
And the producer and sound recorders I was with were Right, we got to get out of here. And I was like, no, it's just, you know, it's far away. don't i mean I've just spent 45 minutes lining up a shot. going to get my shot. And they sort of kept walking closer, you know.
01:04:37
brian kelly
But I was you know kind of you the safety of the glass, the safety of the glass, you know and you're going to win and Academy Award for best tracking shot.
01:04:52
brian kelly
But that was actually on that shortly after that trip that I i started falling apart. and And do i remember that talking to the producer afterwards, because the next place we were in, we went in to interview someone in ah and a market.
01:05:07
brian kelly
And when we went into the market, I really started feeling this is someplace where bad things could happen really easily because it's all Warrens.
01:05:18
brian kelly
You're closed in. You wouldn't see someone coming up, ah you know, and you're, you know, you're in a place where there's, we look like Americans, although we didn't look like we posed a threat. We just looked fat and old, you know, but the, and, and I,
01:05:33
brian kelly
And afterwards, my producer said, you know, Brian, I'm not sure what's happening with you. I've known you for a long time, but, you know, there's gunfire and you're not bothered. And we're in a market where everyone's just buying stuff and you're tensing up. So what's what's going on here? And I think afterwards I started to have a... you know
01:05:58
brian kelly
PTSD flashbacks and all kinds of fucked up things. And I think I was becoming, um i was losing my sense of sense of what was going on.
01:06:08
Daithi Flannery
And so you got to do was it Dr. Patrice Keats? Is that in Canada? Did you do some work with her? um
01:06:15
brian kelly
I'm sorry.
01:06:16
Daithi Flannery
Dr. Patrice Keats in Canada?
01:06:18
brian kelly
Oh yeah yeah. How do you know her?
01:06:20
Daithi Flannery
The internet is a great.
01:06:20
brian kelly
i don't want to, ah do you don't have to talk about this publicly because you know, she's very nice lady.
01:06:24
Daithi Flannery
The internet is a great thing. That's all. I just started searching. um and And I found, ah and is it an interview that she had done with you? Has she done some work with you where you were discussing PTSD?
01:06:36
brian kelly
Yeah, I have to do that. Yeah, yeah, I was ah the there's a wonderful couple. The chap is it was a former bureau chief for Canadian broadcasting in London, and his wife partner ah set up an organization, the Canadian Forum for but Journalism and and Violence.
01:06:57
brian kelly
And it looks, it's a bit like the Dart Centre in the States. It looks it looks at, it helps journalists operate in and report on conflict. So it teaches a lot of, you know, important things. And they had a, they had a conference at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, where Cliff was, Alonso was teaching and he invited me to go and talk. And Patrice was one of the,
01:07:24
brian kelly
uh uh who was uh uh also speaking and she uh uh and she did a lot of work with traumatized canadian soldiers so uh so after meeting her there she actually came to london and you know just kind of uh she just wanted to observe me operating we you know i can't remember i don't know if she learned anything from me doing interviews with you know movie stars or anything.
01:07:51
brian kelly
But with yeah, she's great.
01:07:53
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah, she's
01:07:54
brian kelly
She's very good. She's very good. And that that experience of going and speaking in public about my trauma and about, and it also it motivated me to to go back to farmmato where Clark had died.
01:07:55
Daithi Flannery
yeah she
01:08:10
brian kelly
and um i am A fellow Canadian journalist who spoke Arabic three of us went back to the village and met people who had been there during the massacre because it was ah after Clark was died, was murdered. We don't know about 120 people in the village were massacred.
01:08:30
brian kelly
So I'm not I'm not level. we Our instincts were right. But if we had stayed, would, you know, very likely we would have been caught up if we hadn't been killed by mortars. We had been tied up in the in the massacre.
01:08:45
brian kelly
So knowing I was going to Canada to speak at this thing, I thought, well, you know, I've been talking about going back to Farmada for 25 years. And Nala Ayyad is the Canadian journalist's name. She was living in Beirut at the time. So, you know, she she held my hand while but we went back.
01:09:05
brian kelly
It was, you know, it was a good thing to do. And I think it's good to, you know, to, you know, to talk about these things.
01:09:08
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:13
brian kelly
I think it helped. You know, hope, I mean, not i hope, but I sometimes think that there will be there'll be ah there'll be a journalist or a crew member who's experiencing flashbacks from terrible things you've seen, but doesn't know what's going on, you know, and to know that what a flashback is, you know, it's, it's important. The first time I started experiencing those, I thought I was losing my mind.
01:09:42
brian kelly
I thought I was going crazy. you know, you're seeing, you're seeing things. Oh, and that's, you know, you think, Ooh, I'm, you know, that's it. Brain's gone.
01:09:51
Daithi Flannery
yeah i think it's very important that people that people like you speak about their trauma not just for the guitar to effect on yourself but as you're saying for for others going forward that they know they're not alone that they know of this this this is uh it's it's a normal reaction to an abnormal situation you know uh
01:09:52
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:09:56
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:10:00
brian kelly
yeah no yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know and there's a and i there there's a uh there's a uh um i'm not sure what his title is exactly he's written books about anthony feinstein in canada he's done a lot of research into why what draws reporters to go to conflict zone and he's trying he was trying to find a common thread and I don't think he has don't think he has particular um uh but it's uh uh
01:10:30
Daithi Flannery
Okay. Okay.
01:10:43
brian kelly
uh yeah know why would you keep exposing yourself to that you know although you know why do people become firemen policemen why do people become soldiers you know Why do, you know, yeah, exactly.
01:10:55
Daithi Flannery
because they find meaning in it in some ways.
01:10:58
brian kelly
You know, yeah. Why do the, why do, why do kids go out and throw Molotov cocktails more than once?
01:11:00
Daithi Flannery
um
01:11:06
brian kelly
You know, they keep doing it.
01:11:07
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:11:08
brian kelly
They keep doing it.
01:11:08
Daithi Flannery
it's a
01:11:10
Daithi Flannery
There's a lot of trauma in the things you see and there's a lot of violence and and and you've lost people.
01:11:19
Daithi Flannery
is Is there something that stays with you about you're going to these places to take images and then you're leaving again? um
01:11:26
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:11:27
Daithi Flannery
And a lot of the images you're taking are of people that are going through really horrific times and horrific famines.
01:11:27
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:11:31
brian kelly
Yeah. And you get, and they can't leave.
01:11:33
Daithi Flannery
And you can't, you can't, you're not there to help them as such.
01:11:34
brian kelly
They can't leave. They can't leave. Yeah. No, no. And one of my one of my deepest regrets is we were filming a a documentary in Afghanistan.
01:11:50
brian kelly
And we had, we're doing one on the on on education went into schools. And it was one little about an eight year old boy.
01:12:03
brian kelly
And he was just He wore it smartly. He was wearing a little blazer. you know, he looked really quite smart. Obviously, his mom and dad had taken special care with him, and he was just really engaged and nice. And we interviewed him, and the reporter asked him about his father.
01:12:27
brian kelly
And he said, oh, my my father was killed recently. Beside me, we were i was we were playing together out on the street in front of our house and the shell land and then he was killed.
01:12:41
brian kelly
And I looked at my camera and I hadn't been rolling.
01:12:47
brian kelly
I just hadn't pressed the button. And we had I had to tell Carol off the reporter and she had to say to him, you know, when she says something like, it well you know, when you do really bad things,
01:13:02
brian kelly
Well, Brian has just done a really bad thing.
01:13:03
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:13:05
brian kelly
He wasn't recording. Tell you tell your story again. And he did. And then the next day or a couple of days later, we arranged to go and film him playing outside in the street outside because we were going to tell the story, obviously.
01:13:22
brian kelly
And and then and and then Carol and Heather Abbott, the producer, went up to to speak to them his mother. And i just said, and I pulled out a hundred dollar bill out of my wallet and and and gave it to them.
01:13:41
brian kelly
And she said, oh, Brian, what a wonderful idea. We'll do that. And they did the same thing. And then months later, I got a letter from this little guy saying, you know, hi, it was so nice meeting you, Uncle Brian and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't respond.
01:13:57
brian kelly
I didn't know what to say. i didn't know. And I didn't respond. I had no idea if he lived, nothing else. And it was like, it wouldn't I guess I'd have to write a fucking letter, you know. And, you know, amazing failure, amazing failure. And, you know, people we worked with in Afghanistan, Carol spent 15 years helping a family get visas to move to Canada because they participated in our documentary and got into trouble with warlords and they had to get out. There were refugees that helped them.
01:14:32
brian kelly
Another reporter, b Brian Stewart, a great friend who, you know, virtually adopted a child in in Ethiopia. And we're watching the live aid is the anniversary of live aid is up. Well, she was, you know, part of the live aid thing because the CBC crew would film her when she was almost going to de die. And all these things.
01:14:53
brian kelly
I didn't, I didn't do anything. And I really, you know, it's like, are you, you know, you want could i wind back the clock i'd write that kid a letter i don't forget to him but i you know i didn't and and you know yeah you're you're and you're and it's i think it's it's very i've got to be very i know my own daughter sometimes says dad you can't tell anybody else that you know it's like you're you're because you're
01:15:21
brian kelly
i'm you know i've made my I've made money and I've you know had a good life and I've had adventurous travel, a fair bit of it based on other people's misery.
01:15:34
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, but you didn't cause the misery.
01:15:35
brian kelly
And I, you know,
01:15:36
Daithi Flannery
but
01:15:37
brian kelly
very, very rarely, very, very rarely, but there are some times when what I've done is achieved some good. i did We filmed in Bosnia and we filmed a story about a both a father and son who had stepped on landmines and lost their leg.
01:15:53
brian kelly
Right. And that story was broadcast in Canada and a group of retired warrant officers in Nova Scotia and Halifax, Nova Scotia, raised money and sent money to get those people prosthetic legs, you know, and that's so sometimes it works. But but you can drive yourself crazy if you think that, you know, that your pictures of dead children are going to influence people.
01:16:21
brian kelly
because mostly they don't. i mean how many mean, how many dead Palestinians do we have to see before we actually do something about it?
01:16:29
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, no.
01:16:31
brian kelly
I mean, it's rough one.
01:16:33
Daithi Flannery
Yeah,
01:16:33
brian kelly
it's ah it's ah it's
01:16:34
Daithi Flannery
no
01:16:34
brian kelly
rough one There is someone, I can't remember who it was, who did say, though, is that, you know, but you you can't change what people in power do, but you can at least say you knew.
01:16:49
brian kelly
you know, they can't deny they knew.
01:16:52
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:16:53
brian kelly
Yeah, so...
01:16:53
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:16:53
brian kelly
but
01:16:57
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, no, there is, um ah remember ABC, well, I don't remember, I wasn't alive at the time, but ABC did is it a ah movie, the The Day After, and it was about a nuclear war, and Ronald Reagan saw that.
01:17:13
brian kelly
Okay.
01:17:16
brian kelly
Okay.
01:17:16
Daithi Flannery
And the next day, i think he got in contact with his Russian counterpart and they started signing kind of some form nuclear.
01:17:23
brian kelly
All right. Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:17:25
Daithi Flannery
So i I do think there is impact upwards.
01:17:27
brian kelly
Oh, yeah. It can be.
01:17:29
Daithi Flannery
You know, of course, you're transmitting to the people, to the public.
01:17:31
brian kelly
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
01:17:33
Daithi Flannery
But let's I think you do make an impact.
01:17:33
brian kelly
There's a...
01:17:36
brian kelly
Yeah, Christiane Amanpour, who's CNN, you know, she's world renowned. During the Bosnian War, they ah sat the White House set up a link to Sarajevo so someone at the press conference in Sarajevo could ask a question. She was chosen to ask the question.
01:18:02
brian kelly
And when you see the footage, you know, you hear in the the press coordinator says to President Clinton, sir, we're going to go now to Sarajevo to take a question from Christiane Anandpoor.
01:18:15
brian kelly
And you can see a little smile on his face like, oh, what's this about? And she says that she didn't know what she was going to say until the red light went.
01:18:29
brian kelly
well And what she says is Mr. President, when are you going to do something about this? You know, thousands are being killed.
01:18:40
brian kelly
but And just bang, when are you going to do something about it? And he was like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then walked on and turned to his aides and said, what the fuck was that? You know, and really yeah came up to speed on it.
01:18:56
brian kelly
Yeah, you know.
01:18:57
Daithi Flannery
That was Clinton, wasn't it?
01:18:58
brian kelly
And there's also during that same war, that was that there happened to be a cameraman in the market when there was an attack at a rocket. I mean, we're so, we are becoming desensitized to these kind of images now because we've all got our iPhones.
Evolution of Journalism Practices
01:19:17
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:19:17
brian kelly
So nothing happens anywhere in the world that virtually that there isn't footage of.
01:19:23
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:19:23
brian kelly
Anyplace where there's an iPhone, soon as something happens, the first thing people do is record it.
01:19:29
Daithi Flannery
Is this show footage?
01:19:31
brian kelly
So we're seeing, well, that wasn't that wasn't quite the case. Seeing all the body parts from this, and people shopping, people can relate to that.
01:19:41
brian kelly
What were they doing? They were shopping.
01:19:44
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:19:45
brian kelly
And that's,
01:19:47
Daithi Flannery
So throughout your career,
01:19:48
brian kelly
I'll be the judge of that.
01:19:52
Daithi Flannery
throughout your career, you you've seen news change. It went from broadcasting several times a day at particular times to the 24 hour news cycle.
01:20:04
Daithi Flannery
And now, as you were saying, nothing can happen in the world really without there being a phone presence that can capture
01:20:09
brian kelly
Yeah. Yeah.
01:20:11
Daithi Flannery
How has that changed what you do or how do you feel about it?
01:20:13
brian kelly
Would I do?
01:20:14
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:20:15
brian kelly
Oh, well, yeah. i mean I mean,
01:20:20
brian kelly
well the biggest, the really biggest change was when we went from film to videotape.
01:20:32
brian kelly
Right? Because film, you had to take it to a lab and have it processed. And then you had to take it to a TV station to have it put in a telecine chain and broadcast.
01:20:45
brian kelly
So there was a time limit on everything. Yeah. So once you ended up where you could do where you you know you could go live from places, whether it was a satellite truck or people just, news executives got obsessed with being live.
01:21:04
brian kelly
And so rather than going someplace and basically disappearing for 10 days and coming back with a stack of footage or some raw material and then putting it together and editing it and thinking about it and writing, we didn't do all that.
01:21:20
brian kelly
just did live shows you and i can remember was during a reagan gorbachev summit in moscow and i was working for abc news and the correspondent we we had a live location down by the river looking back at the kremlin and uh the uh uh uh getting ready to do the morning show and they uh
01:21:22
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:21:45
brian kelly
Anchorman asked the, said, okay, we're going to come to you in a moment. It comes to you in a while. We've got some questions. I'm going to be asking you what the mood is in Moscow. And he said, he was the mood in Moscow.
01:21:59
brian kelly
you know I flew in last night. I came to the hotel. haven't been allowed to leave the hotel because you keep asking me to do more and more live shots. The only people I've spoken to are the waiters and the crew.
01:22:13
brian kelly
I have no fucking idea what the mood in Moscow, but that would be, ended up being our experience. There'd be an earthquake somewhere and you go and set up a live shot on the roof of a hotel and Ryan with a satellite dish and, you know, engineer everything.
01:22:20
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:22:31
brian kelly
And then the reporter would talk and the footage would be from other people. wouldn't You wouldn't be going out to do a story. And you know that's really changed ah law a lot, a lot, a lot. I mean, and it just it's not it's really difficult to do. But Jon Snow, when the the Katrina hurricane happened, Channel 4 sent him.
01:22:54
brian kelly
And they wanted him to anchor, because he's the anchorman, they wanted him to anchor the show from Katrina. And he said, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to stand in front of a, you know, water and throw it to someone else and throw it in. No, I'm going out with my cameraman and we will go out and we'll leave at six o'clock in the morning and we'll spend the day out talking to people and filming things. And the other thing we'll edit.
01:23:20
brian kelly
And then what you'll see me talk about is stuff I have seen. That's what reporting is.
01:23:25
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:23:27
brian kelly
But, you know, mostly that doesn't happen anymore. Mostly, you know, you people are talking about things that they've read on the wires or they've seen footage of their ecliptic.
01:23:40
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:23:42
brian kelly
so You don't get that many. And it's a shame, I think, because I think that's where really good reporting is. And also and also it's a way that um you know people, where you find out things.
01:23:58
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:23:58
brian kelly
they, you know, one of them, you know, the Canadian producer Edith Champagne was, you know, was very good at telling Toronto, you know, when they would say, okay, what's your story to today?
01:23:58
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah.
01:24:09
brian kelly
and she said, i don't know.
01:24:12
brian kelly
Yeah, I haven't left yet.
01:24:14
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:24:14
brian kelly
ah We'll find a story. don't Don't worry about it. We'll find a story. We always do. And, you know, but it'll be, you know, we're going to go out and we're going to start talking to people.
01:24:19
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:24:21
brian kelly
We're going to start seeing things or start filming things. And we're to, one thing's going to lead to another and at the end of the day we'll have a story, but I'm not going to go out, you know, and try to match something that you've read somewhere else, you know, because, you know, we also, you're, you're, you're reading me a story, but you're, it was one guy, one time it was a, it was the, I worked with a reporter and he was being asked to match the story that was on the Associated Press.
01:24:34
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. the The last thing you want is to have the story before you leave.
01:24:52
brian kelly
And he said, Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's your source. i I happen to know who wrote that story. That's v blogs, and right? And he's an alcoholic. He's a lazy alcoholic.
01:25:04
brian kelly
So he's made that story up. So forget that, you know, and it's one person, by the way, you we'll, you know,
01:25:08
Daithi Flannery
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
01:25:11
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:25:12
brian kelly
But that's the big change. Because you can go live, it's media, people really have time to think about it. And also because because it's 24 hours, i mean I remember reading about this.
01:25:21
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:25:23
brian kelly
and it was ah It used to be that if your minister of minister immigration went on Radio 4 at 8 o'clock in the morning and and said something,
01:25:39
brian kelly
ah he wouldn't get a chance to correct himself if he didn't, you know, until the six o'clock news, right?
01:25:47
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:25:48
brian kelly
Now he can, you know, he can leave, he can leave BBC studios and his aide can say, you know, sir, that was, you know, that's being misinterpreted. Everyone's saying that you've gone too far.
01:26:02
brian kelly
So he goes across down the street to ITN studio and says, you know, and ITN says, before this morning, you just said that, you know, you're going to cut welfare payments. So, well, I was, that was taken out of context.
01:26:15
brian kelly
I'm not, I'm increasing welfare context. And then, you know, and then he goes to another studio.
01:26:19
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah.
01:26:20
brian kelly
And by that time they're saying, well, that was too much. and he's but And so there's less of consequence. being said because you know you can change it all time and that leads to the you know the insanity of a president united states who you know you know we're going to impose 35 percent tariffs on canada no we're not going to do no tariffs we're going to know we're doing 75 percent in the next it's like you're you know it's part of the shtick but you're dealing with there's no reality has disappeared no reality you know
01:26:50
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah. it's it's It's very hard to see what what is reality now.
01:26:55
brian kelly
Yeah. Oh, and and then the we can get into talking about AI, but, you know, sure you are too. You're seeing stuff that in you and it's, you know, you're seeing looks like real people in real situations doing real things.
01:27:07
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:27:08
brian kelly
And it turns out it's just been asking
Challenges of Modern Journalism
01:27:13
brian kelly
this program to create those things for you.
01:27:13
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:27:15
brian kelly
And they're very believable. So I don't, you know, I don't know where we're going to be when,
01:27:21
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:27:21
brian kelly
when you don't trust anything. And then it's very bad. It's very bad because
01:27:24
Daithi Flannery
ah you seeing any kind of Are you seeing any kind of safeguards in your industry coming in for that or any talk about we have to deal with this AI situation or we have to regulations in?
01:27:33
brian kelly
Well, the the ah the, you know, BBC for one here run and runs, a you know, a very, very tight fact checking thing that they can, they can look at images and they can put them through a machine that tells them that geo locates them and they can, you know, so there, there is some of that.
01:27:54
brian kelly
But, but for the general public, you know, who are mostly now not getting their news from the BBC or ITN or RTE, they're
01:27:55
Daithi Flannery
like
01:28:03
brian kelly
They're going on, you know, getting other sources.
01:28:06
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:28:09
Daithi Flannery
For young journalists heading into the field today, especially those who want to do frontline work, that what would you say to them?
01:28:12
brian kelly
Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it.
01:28:16
Daithi Flannery
And you'd already answered, don't do it.
01:28:18
brian kelly
Run. run Run away. Run away.
01:28:20
Daithi Flannery
um Go back and make up something on AI.
01:28:21
brian kelly
Run away. it like
01:28:22
Daithi Flannery
Go back and make up something.
01:28:23
brian kelly
but my first question would be, how rich are your parents?
01:28:27
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:28:28
brian kelly
Because you're going to be relying on for a long time. for a long time
01:28:31
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:28:32
brian kelly
and and I'm joking, but actually, you know, the the my middle daughter, when we went to her graduation graduation at Nottingham University, we ended up sitting next to a a journalist at the Guardian newspaper.
01:28:33
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:28:48
brian kelly
And his daughter was getting graduating as well. And he she said that she had thought about going into journalism. And he said, oh, yeah, you could do. Why not? Be nice. Follow me. Why not?
01:29:00
brian kelly
And he checked with the Guardian to see what was the starting salary for a junior reporter at the Guardian. And the figure was exactly what he had got 25 years earlier.
01:29:15
Daithi Flannery
Oof.
01:29:16
brian kelly
Yeah. So it's, it's, you know, by all means, I mean, I, you know, it's a,
01:29:17
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:29:23
brian kelly
it's a wonderful career and you get, you know, you meet, you know, you, You meet amazing people. You know, I filmed interviews with, I spent time, John LeCari and his wife cooked dinner for me and my and other people. I mean, how many, you don't get to do that, you know.
01:29:38
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:29:38
brian kelly
george George Harrison made tea for me, you know.
01:29:42
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:29:42
brian kelly
i mean, there you get, you know, you meet interesting, you know, famous people and interesting ordinary people as well, you know.
01:29:46
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah.
01:29:50
brian kelly
And it and it just, it gives you, ah you know, it's it's a license to be, to and to get to know people, you know.
01:29:50
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:29:57
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:29:58
brian kelly
you know, yeah, I do. I'm, I like walking around now. I have a lovely stills camera and I like carrying it around and meeting people and, and, you know, and my friends are, you know, I always, I'm amazed how I'll see, I'll see someone with a t-shirt, you know, that's interesting.
01:30:17
brian kelly
And I'll just go up and talk to them, ask to take their picture.
01:30:19
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:30:21
brian kelly
And they're like, man, you're you know ah i wouldn't Don't you feel shy? and know um You know, because often that's what you have to do. You know, you're someplace and you're, you know, you're trying to get an interview with someone.
01:30:31
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. That.
01:30:36
brian kelly
That's my darling wife now.
01:30:38
Daithi Flannery
OK, very good.
01:30:38
brian kelly
the ah You're trying to, you know, you're trying to get clips from people.
01:30:42
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:30:43
brian kelly
You got to run up to them and say, hi you know, we, you know, and, you know,
01:30:46
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:30:49
brian kelly
do streeters, which, you know, that's the other, that's, the that's the lazy person's way of getting public opinion, but they can be fun too.
01:30:58
brian kelly
They can be fun.
01:31:00
Daithi Flannery
Okay, what's your most terrifying moment of your career?
01:31:05
brian kelly
Ooh.
01:31:09
brian kelly
When I was really scared,
01:31:14
brian kelly
Well, know, it's funny, I'm trying to remember, and another memory comes to mind, is that when we were in Firmata, and the shells had destroyed both our cars, and were, cordite was everything, and we decided, we
01:31:32
brian kelly
made a collective decision that we should make a run for it than the house we were in that the rounds were getting closer and that we were likely to be killed where we were and we should make a run for it.
01:31:43
brian kelly
And we left ran after we got split up at two different groups. And we're going up this hill and there had been machine gun fire back and forth. And I heard the sound of incoming and saw a shell land on top of the hill.
01:32:00
brian kelly
So I saw the white smoke and and myself when saw I threw myself down on the ground and I thought, I'm going to be okay.
01:32:14
brian kelly
know um I'm doing the right things. I'm going to be okay. And Clark, I heard Clark say, there's someone up there. And I said, I said, duck, duck, get down, get down. And he said, I can't.
01:32:26
brian kelly
And I turned around and he had a inch round inch deep hole in his chest. And I left up and grabbed him and threw him over the wall. And then Nikki and I kind of got him into the house and got into a bed.
01:32:39
brian kelly
So a funny way, I don't, it's what, and that was, so that wasn't, I wasn't, wouldn't frighten, but there was the ah the opposite of being frightened because I think that had, had I not thrown myself on the ground, whatever hit Clark, I think it was shrapnel or a bullet.
01:32:58
brian kelly
If I had been standing up, both of us could have got it or maybe him, me, not him. So wow it now I think back of it and it feels almost a like a mystical thing happening.
01:33:15
brian kelly
Thank you.
01:33:20
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, no, that's a big moment. I'm sorry i'm sorry you went through that. um
01:33:28
Daithi Flannery
You used as an EDMR eye therapy.
01:33:32
brian kelly
Yes, I did. Yeah. Incredibly sick.
01:33:34
Daithi Flannery
How did you find that? Yes.
01:33:36
brian kelly
Incredibly successful, incredibly successful.
01:33:37
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:33:39
brian kelly
And you know what, the therapist I was working with ah when we started doing it, she explained that they weren't, it was relatively new.
01:33:39
Daithi Flannery
Good.
01:33:51
brian kelly
They weren't quite certain why it worked, but that it did. And as we went through different stages of it, I think what it is,
01:34:04
brian kelly
The idea is your therapist will ask you to, you know, you're you're asking me questions about what happened. I'm remembering what I did. But with the therapist, what they're doing is they're asking you to to relive the moment, to really go back into that moment.
01:34:21
brian kelly
And if you're if you're suffering from trauma, PTSD at the height of it, I mean, that's very easy to do. And the idea is that when you're deep, deep within it,
01:34:33
brian kelly
then the therapist will pause and, and and do, you know, get you all of their finger bo or, or tap. And it's, it's a distraction.
01:34:44
brian kelly
I'll join you in a moment. inspect i mean Yeah.
01:34:49
brian kelly
Yeah, but you can go over, you don't. Yeah, we won't be very long. And that you're going to be, you can be bra brought back into the room, right?
01:35:02
brian kelly
going to be brought back into the room and there and slowly what happens is that you realize that actually those intrusive memories and smells and all emotions all actually happened in the past you know actually happened in the past and so it's part of you but it's not overpowering you.
01:35:30
brian kelly
and and so And it's very, very effective. Very, I can still have, haven't had it in quite a while, but yeah after my therapy finished,
01:35:50
brian kelly
the And it kind of dragged on for a long time because while I was doing the therapy, all the shit that happened to me, you know, a friend of mine had his side of his head blown, almost blown off his correspondents, lost most of his fucking brain, survived and did some thing. Another friend was killed in in Iraq with another good, you know, buddy.
01:36:10
brian kelly
All those things were happening at the same time. So it was all going nuts. But after when all that was over with and I started then i left cb i left CBC and started freelancing it.
01:36:23
brian kelly
When I went back to ABC where where the worst had happened when I was working with Clark and Lebanon, I went back to the in the offices in the Hammersmith Bureau and I sat in the crew room.
01:36:35
brian kelly
had a cup of coffee and I looked out the window and the building across what I was seeing, the whole top floor exploded in a wall of flames.
01:36:47
brian kelly
Just, you know, and I was like, my God. And I said, oh, hang on. Oh, wait a minute. Okay. I'm back at ABC. This is where that happened.
01:36:58
brian kelly
So, you know, yeah a real live full color technical, you know, it wasn't quite a flashback because I hadn't, well, I had seen stuff like that before.
01:37:00
Daithi Flannery
oh
01:37:11
brian kelly
You know, I had seen stuff like that before. I'd been filming in Bear Roo one time, and were f the they were blowing up these series of buildings, and our driver, lovely, lovely Cosm, said that we should move, you know, because it's getting too close.
01:37:25
brian kelly
So Chewie, my sound records, and I started running down the stairs, and Chewie said, Brian, be careful, be careful, you'll trip. And I got the giggles.
01:37:33
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:37:33
brian kelly
I got the giggles, you know. Oh, fucking world is exploding out there.
01:37:38
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:37:39
brian kelly
They're dropping, you know, 10,000 pound bombs and I'm supposed to worry about tripping on the staircase.
01:37:48
brian kelly
It's a bit silly.
01:37:49
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:37:50
brian kelly
Yeah, EMDR. Anyone who's going through any traumatic stuff, find someone who who's good with EMDR and and it's it's so it's a very good way to
01:37:52
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:38:04
brian kelly
to uh i hate to i don't like the word process but that's what it is to process this stuff ah process this stuff
01:38:07
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:38:10
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. Yeah. um I've i have two last questions now Brian for you, then I'll let you go and watch the tennis. I know you're dying to see
01:38:16
brian kelly
it's my what my favorite food is
01:38:18
Daithi Flannery
No, not kind they're not going to be that quick.
01:38:19
brian kelly
you know
01:38:21
Daithi Flannery
They're not going to be that quick. And and to be honest, I'm not really interested in what you're having
Acts of Kindness Amidst Conflict
01:38:24
Daithi Flannery
for dinner.
01:38:25
brian kelly
it
01:38:27
Daithi Flannery
But we've talked a lot here about traumatic experiences and and and some of the horrific things you've seen. But in the midst of all that, have you seen kind of acts of kindness and acts of goodness that you thought, oh, my God, that that is happening right here, right now is amazing.
01:38:35
brian kelly
Yeah. oh Yeah.
01:38:49
brian kelly
Yeah. There's always, yeah, not always, but you know, nothing comes to mind. It's terrible, but nothing really comes up to my mind right now.
01:38:58
Daithi Flannery
that's That's because you're a trained news person and if it bleeds, it leads.
01:38:59
brian kelly
But, know,
01:39:01
Daithi Flannery
So you're
01:39:04
brian kelly
Yeah, probably you don't really... yeah the there There are, oh you know, I'm thinking of, you know, nurses in Ethiopia and medicine, the people from MedSouth, South Mountain, you know, these are people who just, you know, every day, they keep doing it every day, every day. And they, you know, they're their ability to endure the pain of others and and bring kindness to it, you know.
01:39:34
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:39:35
brian kelly
I'm thinking they would in Ethiopia, we went back 10 years after the Ethiopian famine and you know met the nurse that b Brian Stewart, the reporter, had worked with 10 years previously. and that just you know if If you believe in halos, this nurse, you know,
01:39:58
brian kelly
I had this aura about her, you know, and she had, you know, lived through the whole famine, treated people, you know, and done it without oh anger.
01:40:08
brian kelly
And I worked with, he's passed down for me, a wonderful reporter named Joe Schlesinger, who was part of the Kindertransport, you know, yeah.
01:40:19
brian kelly
yeah his father in Czechoslovakia put him on a train and got him to England and he ended up in Canada in a wonderful career, a very successful, wonderful journalist. And we...
01:40:31
brian kelly
we Uh, uh, we went assignment. We happened to end up in the same, near the same village. And we went back to the train station where he'd been put on the train.
Generational Trauma and Empathy
01:40:42
brian kelly
We did. And that, that night we were, uh, we, as I came out of the hotel, he was out on the street and and he was talking to a very elderly German shop. Uh, and, uh, and I said, Joe, what was that all about?
01:40:54
brian kelly
And he said, oh, you know, we were talking about the old days, you know, when he was on one end of the stick and I was on the other end of the stick. And I said, would you you do you not feel any anger? any And he said, no, actually I don't. He said, I've had a good life, you know, I've had a great career.
01:41:16
brian kelly
And i in and i if I went down the path of hatred, you know, would have to be good person. who know I would have been a different person and I would have never stopped.
01:41:30
brian kelly
So I don't feel any hatred. I refuse to feel hatred for those people. And, you know, and I there's a you know,
01:41:41
brian kelly
I'm not a trained psychologist, so I don't know exactly how it happens, but, you know, you know, they what we're seeing in Palestine and we go, you know, how is that possible?
01:41:55
brian kelly
How can you're there? How is that possible? Well, because they've grown up, you know, with the Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust, and that hatred and hatred and hatred.
01:42:05
Daithi Flannery
Yes, yes, yes.
01:42:08
brian kelly
And they, you know, and I went to, there's a ah ah Northern Irish, I'm not going to pronounce his name right. Is it John Allardreis? Allardreis? Do you know him?
01:42:21
brian kelly
he's a Northern Irish politician. He's a psychotherapist.
01:42:23
Daithi Flannery
I don't know directly.
01:42:25
brian kelly
I'll drive us out. etic And, and, and he he's a psychotherapist. And he and he said, you know, when you ask, when people say, how can the Jews do this, despite what happened to them?
01:42:35
brian kelly
It's not despite it's because it happened. Why, you know, you get, you know, hate, hatred is, you know, you know, still goes on.
01:42:44
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:42:45
brian kelly
mean, you're living in Ireland, you know, you're, You know, you don't have to go travel very far to see hatred that's deeply, deeply rooted.
01:42:52
Daithi Flannery
ah true
01:42:55
brian kelly
And it's just passed on from generation to generation.
01:42:59
Daithi Flannery
That's true. That's true. And the stories, as you said, the Holocaust story is such a, it's such a massive part of the kind of myth building of Israel, the nation building of Israel, it's it's a fundamental part of what began it is the Holocaust.
01:43:07
brian kelly
Sure.
01:43:10
brian kelly
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:43:13
Daithi Flannery
So they carry that with them all the time. And as you said, it's always pointing towards some evil. They're always looking for, for somewhere to say, that's exactly why we have to stop that because of the Holocaust, you know, it's horrific what they're doing.
01:43:24
Daithi Flannery
They're absolutely horrific.
01:43:25
brian kelly
Yeah, you know, probably guys, but Palestinians had nothing to do with that.
01:43:30
Daithi Flannery
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
01:43:31
brian kelly
Anyway, we digress. Possibly we digress.
01:43:34
Daithi Flannery
We digress. Okay, final question, and then I will let you go and hear that or watch the tennis. um It's a question I ask at the end to all my guests. If we were writing a new story of what it is to be human from a blank s slate, and you could put in one sentence in this new story of what it is to be human, what would that sentence be?
01:43:57
brian kelly
to be human.
01:43:58
Daithi Flannery
Yeah.
01:43:59
brian kelly
You have to have empathy.
01:44:02
brian kelly
You have to be able to see how the other person see the other person's point of view to kind of put yourself in there. position, you know, to feel for them, to have and to have empathy for them.
01:44:15
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:44:19
brian kelly
to
01:44:21
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:44:21
brian kelly
that's what mean That's what you mean. Without empathy, you're you're barely human. Very good.
01:44:28
Daithi Flannery
Okay, Brian, thank you for joining us.
01:44:29
brian kelly
This is a pretty good first run. I think we should do this again when I'm a little bit more articulate. and
01:44:34
Daithi Flannery
Absolutely. You've been great. Absolutely. You've been great. And I'm sure there is a world of stories left ah to get from you.
01:44:40
brian kelly
Now, i have I have a question for you.
01:44:42
Daithi Flannery
Okay.
01:44:43
brian kelly
Okay, where does your interest in trauma come from?
01:44:50
Daithi Flannery
and my own trauma. I think that's where that's where a lot of people's interest in in trauma comes from. I think a lot of people who have interest in psychology and and and subjects like that is because of their own traumatic experiences.
01:45:06
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:45:06
Daithi Flannery
um And I had an upbringing that wasn't an awful lot different than your own.
01:45:13
brian kelly
Okay. Yeah.
01:45:15
Daithi Flannery
So yeah, that's where my interest in it comes from. And maybe that's where So my passion comes from but what what builds us. It's hard to look back and tell, you know, but the
01:45:26
brian kelly
No, it's um it's ah it's a bit of a mosaic, isn't it?
01:45:29
Daithi Flannery
yeah, yes, it is.
01:45:30
brian kelly
Yeah, it is.
01:45:31
Daithi Flannery
Yes, it is.
01:45:32
brian kelly
All right.
01:45:32
Daithi Flannery
but But yeah, I definitely do have an interest in it. And I have an interest in people like yourself who have found ways to cope with it or found ways to deal with it is the wrong way because you're you're always carrying these things, I imagine. But a way to get by, a way to get through. And and
01:45:51
Daithi Flannery
being able to leave coping mechanisms or tell people about coping mechanisms
01:45:58
Daithi Flannery
for other people that have gone through a trauma, I think is very important.
01:46:01
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:46:02
Daithi Flannery
um and Because if if people go through trauma and they have zero coping mechanisms, the impact is going to be a lot harder. Whereas as if if they have been told I can do this or I can do that or the EDMR or stuff like that.
01:46:15
Daithi Flannery
It can have less of an impact, the trauma itself, because it's not let sit with them. You know, it's not let fester and do more damage over time. um So I think getting conversations like this out there and somebody who might have gone through trauma and might immediately go and find EDMR.
01:46:34
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:46:34
Daithi Flannery
that That could be more beneficial, you know. um And I think life is traumatic, no matter what. Now you've lived in a particular kind of life and seen some um very traumatic things.
01:46:44
brian kelly
Yeah.
01:46:46
Daithi Flannery
But I think most people suffer. We all get traumatized by different levels of of things.
01:46:52
brian kelly
Oh, yeah.
01:46:53
Daithi Flannery
so So I think everybody's traumatized to a certain extent.
01:46:54
brian kelly
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's some, there's a some, I'll give a book plug here.
01:47:07
brian kelly
um A wonderful correspondent I work with at ABC News, um James Longman,
01:47:07
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, please.
01:47:15
brian kelly
ah has a book out called The Inherited Mind.
01:47:20
Daithi Flannery
Oh.
01:47:20
brian kelly
And his,
01:47:23
brian kelly
it's partly personal memoir, but also looking in to some of the science of it all, ah both his grandfather and his father committed suicide.
01:47:34
brian kelly
And when James in his early 20s started experiencing depression, he got seriously worried that maybe he had inherited from his grandfather and father this thing that would lead him, you know and so he took him a long time to get to finally write the book but he looks at his own personal experiences and writes about that but also writes about the research he's a journalist and a very good one he he does the research and what have they found do they know about you know how you know how does trauma get a hold of you and what you know what you know what works and what and why some people can you know
01:48:14
brian kelly
have a horrible childhood and yet be fine. And other people have horrible childhoods and end up, you know, being criminals and drug addicts and everything else, you know?
01:48:28
brian kelly
So what it's, it's, it's, a ah that's my plug, my plug for James.
01:48:32
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, no, that sounds like a very interesting book, The Inherited Mind, kind of ah ah about generational trauma and and what the studies are showing about that.
01:48:34
brian kelly
Yeah. Yeah.
01:48:39
brian kelly
yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:48:40
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, that sounds um's very interesting.
01:48:40
brian kelly
And it's, you know, it's, it's, he's he's, he's a good writer and a clever guy. And it's an interesting story. But it was almost was really interesting is the research that he does and the, the, the way that people explain
01:48:56
brian kelly
how people how people deal with trauma and and how you and what you can do yourself.
01:49:03
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:49:03
brian kelly
one of the quotes in the book is uh one of the people he did and he did some experiment was this uh the three words uh i forgive myself are very very powerful very powerful to say you know and uh uh you know that's uh uh You know, you've just told me that your family situation wasn't all that different from mine. You know, I forgive myself for not helping my mother when I was a five-year-old kid.
01:49:37
brian kelly
You know, I have to forgive myself for that. You know, you didn't, you know, and intervene you you're a kid. So I forgive myself.
01:49:47
brian kelly
Very powerful words.
01:49:50
Daithi Flannery
yes they are yes they are Tom never told me you'd try and make me cry he warned you he didn't warn me
01:49:51
brian kelly
Very good.
01:49:57
brian kelly
ah and i come Very good. Excellent. Well, what a wonderful. Yeah, I'm so I'm really glad that you got that old that connection.
01:50:04
Daithi Flannery
yeah
01:50:08
brian kelly
That's very good.
01:50:09
Daithi Flannery
no it's great it's great
01:50:09
brian kelly
Very good. Excellent. It's a good man. Bob's a good man.
01:50:12
Daithi Flannery
Yes, he is. Yes, he is. And you're a good man to brand. I very much appreciate you doing this interview and I hope you'll be back sometime and we can talk again.
01:50:16
brian kelly
Well, my pleasure. Very good. Yeah. Yeah.
01:50:20
Daithi Flannery
I'm I'm in Galway.
01:50:20
brian kelly
Now, are you in Galway? Yeah.
01:50:22
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, I'm a go. So if you're if you're ever.
01:50:25
brian kelly
Not a bad place to be.
01:50:26
Daithi Flannery
That's beautiful. And especially today, it's like 30 something degrees out there.
01:50:29
brian kelly
Yeah. is Is Moran's Oyster Bar still there?
01:50:32
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, it is. Clarence Bridge. Yeah.
01:50:35
brian kelly
Very good. Well, you know, I'd say let's ah let's you and Tom and I meet up and first pints on you.
01:50:36
Daithi Flannery
Yeah, it's still there.
01:50:41
Daithi Flannery
Yeah. We'll go to Moran's and...
01:50:43
brian kelly
First pints on you.
01:50:44
Daithi Flannery
Okay, fair enough. I'll take that. I'll take that.
01:50:47
brian kelly
yeah
01:50:47
Daithi Flannery
I'll be happy to buy it because the other 16 will be on ye.
01:50:51
brian kelly
and Exactly. like
01:50:53
Daithi Flannery
ah
01:50:54
brian kelly
but i think My thinking, exactly. but
01:50:56
Daithi Flannery
yeah Okay, great.
01:50:58
brian kelly
All right.
01:50:59
Daithi Flannery
Listeners, thank you for joining us.
01:50:59
brian kelly
Okay, buddy.
01:51:01
Daithi Flannery
This has been Philosophacry. That has been Brian Kelly. Thank you very much.