We need reporters on the ground to help us see through the fog of war, but that is always a messy task. In asymmetric early 21st-century conflicts in north Africa and the Middle East, almost all of them dealing at least in part with blowback from previous western interventions, it has become an awesomely difficult job. On battlefields with blurred frontlines, and multiple antagonists whose identities and motivations are obscure, journalists are as much of a target as everyone else. Donning a flak jacket and trying to send home a quote or image that makes sense of it all is not a job for everyone.
So what sort of guy was John Cantlie, the British photographer and reporter who was, most likely, killed by an airstrike in Iraq in 2017, having been kidnapped in Syria in 2012? Hostage spends three episodes trying to work it out. That it does so without the help of Cantlie’s family, who declined to participate, only adds to the feeling that there is much we cannot know. But, particularly in the initial impression given by the opening instalment, this is not the reverent tribute we might expect for a man whose vocation is usually held in high esteem. Cantlie comes across as a maverick who was a danger to himself and to others, as hard to analyse as the brutal chaos he kept throwing himself into.
