When the US and Israel kicked off a war by launching a volley of deadly strikes on Iran in February, 7News chief reporter Chris Reason was already positioned in Tel Aviv, ready to report on the military action his team had anticipated weeks in advance.
Speaking to PIJI almost a month later, Reason is in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, having spent the day on a guided tour – courtesy of Hezbollah – of buildings, mostly homes, in Bekaa Valley levelled by Israeli attacks.
He says the tour was strictly controlled, with the Hezbollah escort shooing, and sometimes shooting, away anyone the international media tried to speak to who weren’t pre-approved.
But Reason is familiar with walking the tightrope of knowingly being fed a narrative, whether by the likes of Hezbollah or the US Trump administration, and reporting as much truth as possible for audiences back home.
“Balance is so important: ‘One side says this, what does the other side say?’” he says.
“That, at the end of the day, is purest journalism.
“You test the information you get to whatever extent you can … it might be questionable information, it might indeed be propaganda, but you write it in a way that the viewer is well aware that that’s the situation as well.”
Social media posts also help in the search for the truth, with Reason citing the eyewitness videos posted online which helped reveal a US Tomahawk missile was behind the strike on an Iranian primary school that killed more than 160 children and adults.
Social media, and the internet in general, also helps Reason keep up with the “breakneck”, “exhausting” pace of the US/Israel-Iran war. He tells PIJI the story is moving at a speed faster than he’s experienced in decades of reporting.
To stay up to date, he says he constantly monitors dozens of websites and WhatsApp groups, as well as TV, radio and digital news reports, while also planning, filming and filing his own reports.
“There is a huge quantity of information, and I just look for the headlines of each of those, and I just keep note of them all through the day,” Reason says.
“By the end of the day, when it comes time to write, for instance, my six o’clock report, or do a Sunrise cross, I just simply look down that list and prioritise.
“What are the important things? What are the game-changing moments? What’s the information that Australian audiences need to hear?”
Sydney Morning Herald chief photographer Kate Geraghty spent about 10 days in March covering the effects of the conflict in Lebanon with Europe correspondent David Crowe.
This trip marked Geraghty’s third time covering a war in Lebanon in 20 years; a week after her return to Australia, she tells PIJI her prior experience gives her the advantage of relationships with locals and an understanding of local culture.
For Geraghty, “every day starts with the evening before”, where a plan and a backup plan are developed for the next day’s coverage. But given the “fluid” nature of the current conflict, that could all be thrown out the next day.
She says she never faced restrictions by armed groups, including Hezbollah, on where she could go or who she could interview in Lebanon, apart from warnings of evacuation notices issued by Israel.
View this post on Instagram
When covering conflicts, Geraghty’s job involves spending time with families and individuals caught in the middle and capturing the “essence” of those experiences in images.
But as a photojournalist, she is careful to separate her work and her personal feelings.
“You do not put your own feelings into it. Your opinions are irrelevant,” she says.
“You just purely document what’s happening, but you try and encapsulate what that person’s experience is that they’ve just told you and show it truly in an image.”
“Sometimes, you’re not just recording and documenting the story of the day in the sense of, ‘This happened to this person’. It can also be that in the future, you have documented a survivor of a war crime. So every interview is important; every person’s story holds the same value.”
Geraghty says much has changed since she covered her first conflict, the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion. In those days, she would spend a long time on the roof of a hotel with a “very heavy, large satellite phone” trying to send photos back to Australia.
By the time she covered the Battle of Mosul in 2017, Geraghty was filing stories off her iPad on the frontline. This meant within minutes of taking a photo of civilians fleeing ISIS-held areas, the image could be published for audiences back home.
But Geraghty says some things never change in conflict, including people being forced to flee their homes and face constant uncertainty over whether they and their loved ones will survive the day, hospitals full of “horrific” casualties and “life-changing” wounds, “huge” amounts of funerals, and the “detritus of war” on display in bombed-out bridges, vehicles and homes.
“The other thing that doesn’t change is that civilians always bear the brunt of political decisions,” she says.
“Civilians endure the unimaginable.
“So to document the impact of war and the impact of political decisions that shape our society is something that’s very important to me.”
Journalists increasingly at risk
Travelling between warring countries can be an arduous undertaking.
For Reason, the past month involved a mix of land border crossings, flights, multi-day pitstops in semi-neutral locations and ensuring passports remained clear of any troublesome stamps.
Although these logistics can become “90 per cent of the job in war zones”, Reason says much of the load is shouldered by his team, in this case particularly 7News cameraman Jimmy Cannon.
As much as this work is done to be able to access certain locations, safety is also a factor.
Reporting in active war zones means accepting a certain degree of danger, mitigated as much as possible by thorough plans and security measures.
The lack of protection offered by press vests has become more obvious in recent years.
In 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found 129 journalists and media workers were killed in conflicts, resulting in a second consecutive year-on-year record for press deaths.
The CPJ also reported drone killings of press members rose from two in 2023 – the first year CPJ documented such killings – to 39 in 2025.
Geraghty says she first saw a drone being used during the 2006 Lebanon war. Now, she says, the persistent buzzing overhead in regions like Lebanon and Gaza represents not just surveillance, but a constant threat.
She is aware of the danger of her position, and references the death of fellow photojournalist Hussain Hamood, who was killed days beforehand in an Israeli strike on Nabatieh, southern Lebanon.
The day after PIJI’s conversation with Geraghty, another three Lebanese journalists – Ali Shoeib, Fatima Ftouni and Mohammed Ftouni – were killed by a targeted Israeli strike on their vehicle.
Geraghty says she mostly focuses on her job despite the danger, but The Sydney Morning Harold and The Age take journalists’ security “very, very seriously”, with a lot of time and effort spent on mitigating risks.
Reason says his team plot out their days with advice from local sources on routes and potential roadblocks, carry physical maps rather than relying on phones, have protocols about how to pull their vehicle over and hide or find nearby bomb shelters and practice basic battlefield trauma first aid.
About a week before speaking with PIJI, an Iranian missile landed in Tel Aviv so close to Reason’s hotel, his team reached the site before ambulances did. In 2023, Reason and his team dashed into a bomb shelter during a live report as Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted a Hamas missile above them.
“The bomb was detonated by an Iron Dome air defence missile right on top of us, and I looked up and I could see the thing explode as we were sprinting into the shelter,” Reason says.
“Moments like that, dramatic, heart-stopping television, maybe gave the Australian audience a little glimpse when they see the terror and fear on my face and the way I’m running for my life.
“It tells you what it’s like to be at the end of a missile, whether you’re in Lebanon, Tehran, Gaza, or indeed, whether you’re in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.”
But even facing attacks with little to no warning, the work of a journalist does not stop.
Reason says he always has “some lines parked” in his head, ready to use at a moment’s notice. But there are still times where his composure falters; he recalls only being able to swear while reporting from a balcony during an earthquake, and finding it hard to pull himself together when confronted with the aftermath of the Bondi Beach terror attack.
When knocked off-balance by emotional or shocking situations, Reason says it is a journalist’s job to inform, not perform.
“My mother was a nurse, my father was a policeman, and I always think in terms of first responders,” Reason says.
“Journalists aren’t first responders … but we play a very important role.
“If those people fell apart and got emotional, then nothing would get done and no one would get saved … that’s the sort of mentality I employ and deploy every time I come to a place like [a war zone in Lebanon].”
Sezen Bakan