10 Plus 1: Sheila MacVicar On Assignment And In Detention

(CBS)

What do you do at CBS News?

I'm an international correspondent, one of four based in the CBS News bureau in London. I'm currently on assignment in Israel.

I've spent a lot of time pre- and post- 9/11 looking at the question of America's engagement with the rest of the world. Sometimes I don't think we do a very good job holding the mirror up to Americans and showing them why people (and not just in the Middle East) react the way they do. It's not a vacuum.

And generally, we (and by that I mean almost all Western media) do a terrible job in reporting on the simple struggle to survive endured by the vast majority of the world's poor.

My cocktail party in detention.

It was during the Kosovo war. I was traveling with the usual field team -- producer, editor, cameraperson, soundperson -- and what looked like enough gear to power the Balkans. We were on a tight deadline: to get from Montenegro to the Albania/Kosovo border over some of the worlds worst, most dangerous roads to shoot and file for a magazine show the following night.

The Albanian customs officials took one look at all our equipment, and decided we had illicit intentions to start our own TV station. In spite of our protests, they put us in detention, and seized our gear. The nearest phone was 20 miles (or two hours) away. Time ticked by. No one knew where we were. We knew we had to break into one of the vehicles and get our satellite phone out, to try to reach someone in the Albanian government.

In desperation, we sent a driver for bread, broke out a few bottles of Montenegran wine, and invited the customs officials to join us. Within an hour, they were joking, we had the satellite phone up, and were wowing our jailers with this newfangled technology that let them talk to their wives in Tirana or their brothers in Chicago.

Eventually, we made the call, and found a senior government official who ordered our release. And then because it was dark (and dangerous) he ordered up a very odd, balaclava-clad armed escort to take us across Albanian bandit country. As we rolled into our destination at dawn, the last of our armed guards slipped away. We made air that night, exhausted, but on air.

Yes. I'd rather not say.

Good question. My mother asks the same thing. I am passionate about what I do, but sometimes feel I suffer from a failure of imagination.

I read all kinds of stuff, but I regularly check a counter-terrorism blog, which caters to the obsessive, train-spotting end of the genre.

I saw a French film called "Hidden" a couple of months ago that my daughter and I are still discussing. We can't agree on what the ending means. I think we have to buy the DVD. And I loved "Syriana," because, believe me, I know those people.

I'm working my way through the latest crop of war reportage. Still a favorite -- Generation Kill by Evan Wright. That seems to deliver up the very gritty truth.

I clearly remember Lyndon Johnson returning to Washington as the newly sworn in president of the United States. I think all the emotion -- what I saw on television, and in the adults around me -- made a huge impression.

God willing, we would have endless budgets to cover the stories that we all believe should be covered but often aren't because of daunting costs.

The jerk part is easy. I spent a lot of my time in the '90s in the Balkans, at times dealing with some of the most heinous and despicable (and later indicted) war criminals then operating on the planet. I got really fed up with hearing people excuse their own appalling behavior with a sentence that began, "In 1348… ." I used to say I wanted a sign to stick on the side of the car that read "No More Historical Baloney" (or words to that effect.)

Fascinating is harder. Some people are fascinating for their charisma and courage, like King Hussein of Jordan. Some people are fascinating for what they do, or the worlds they walk in (some of my intelligence contacts would give James Bond a run for his money, minus most of the gadgets.) And it is always fascinating watching what happens when a leader takes power and meets the intersection between idealism and realpolitik.

This is a very complex, though long-running story, and members of our audience have different levels of interest and understanding. We don't cover the in's and out's of the Palestinian-Israeli issue on a daily basis, (believe me, there can be a lot of twists along the way) and so there can be a whole back story that has not made it onto our air on a regular basis because it is incremental. We do however figure that most people have at least the broad brush picture as a framework to put the current story into.