MEDIA & BROADCAST
THE ENEMY WITHIN
ABC war correspondentJames Longman,who documents “the extraordinary relationships human beings have with each other” shares his own mental health struggles
Words James Hodge
I became a journalist by accident, really,” says James Longman, chief international ‘I correspondent at ABC News. It comes as a surprise. How can a man whose career has reached such heady heights, who travels the world documenting some of the biggest international conflicts in recent history, have simply ‘fallen’ into it? The answer: his passion for telling the stories of ordinary people who have been thrown into extraordinary — and often tragic — circumstances.
Although born and educated in the UK — including a degree in Arabic — Longman began his journalism career covering Syria’s civil war, which started in 2011. “My mother is part Lebanese, and I wanted to connect with my heritage — to spend some time in the Middle East. I was going back and forth to Syria and, as it happened, I was in the right place at the right time to start documenting the civil war. I happened to be there at a significant point in history, and I was able to access stories that other journalists couldn’t.”