Over There

“They May Be Nuts, but They’re Not Stupid”

Former Hezbollah hostage Terry Anderson on ISIS and the terrifying new normal it’s created.

Slate has partnered with Brooklyn Brewery and RISC to bring its hit war correspondent interview series to our readers. In this fifth installment, Steve Hindy, founder of Brooklyn Brewery and a former Associated Press foreign correspondent, sits down with Terry Anderson, former Associated Press chief Mideast correspondent and author of Den of Lions, a memoir detailing the horrific six years and nine months he spent in captivity in Lebanon.

“They have learned that attacking journalists gets them what they want—publicity, terror,” says Terry Anderson about ISIS and their favored practice of kidnapping and executing foreign correspondents. A former chief Mideast correspondent for the Associated Press who also spent nearly seven years in captivity as a Hezbollah hostage, Anderson is uniquely attuned to both the risks taken by journalists and the ruthlessness of terrorist captors. In the clip above, he discusses how much things have changed since he was taken hostage, as well as the terrifying new normal that ISIS has created in the Middle East. He also points out that, in most places in the world, journalists can be killed with impunity.