Reflections from a Career on the Front Lines with Sean Carberry

Air Dates: July 15-21, 2024

The last 25 years have produced plenty of conflict and a seasoned community of journalists who have moved towards the sound of fighting.  Sean Carberry documents the personal costs of those reporters, producers, photographers, and videographers who, in documenting the worst of humanity, have paid a price with their physical and emotional health.

Carberry spent years as a journalist reporting from some of the world’s most dangerous and mysterious locations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.  He then worked for the government producing oversight reports on military operations in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.  He aims to keep his work non-partisan and non-political as he breaks down complicated foreign policy challenges.  He recently reported for National Public Radio where he served as correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan and currently serves as managing editor at National Defense.  Carberry is also the author of a powerful new memoir, “Passport Stamps, Searching the World for a War to Call Home.”

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Carberry discusses the influences that drove his career and inspired the inside look at wartime reporting in his book.  He said, “I was driven by that need to tell the story, to take people to places,” adding, “when I became a full-time foreign correspondent living in Afghanistan, I felt at home among my people, and finding that that community of people where I felt most myself, where I didn’t have to explain myself, we could just sort of exist together in this space and we all sort of understood each other, wherever we might’ve come from.”

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. A full listing of the national television distribution is available at this link. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. and Mondays at 2:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.