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She is one of the BBC’s most famous faces and voices: Lyse Doucet, 67, has accepted the Prix Bayeux’s invitation to chair the jury’s proceedings this coming October. A “great responsibility” that the journalist, herself a winner of the 2014 Prix Bayeux, fully appreciates.

A thirst to tell stories
From freelance work, Lyse became a correspondent for the BBC. Her job – “the best in the world!” – took her to Afghanistan, Islamabad, and Iran, then to Amman and Jerusalem. Years of travel and discovery during which she learnt that “to tell a society’s story better, you have to understand it and immerse yourself in it”. Telling a society’s story, reporting the news – Lyse has made this her guiding principle. More than an ambition, it is a true way of life that she has embraced. “Being a journalist is a way of approaching life and living life.” By living in places, she builds relationships, weaves the network of contacts she lacked upon her arrival, and ultimately forges very strong bonds. “Through covering these regions, they are no longer simply news stories: they are part of our lives. Going to place again and again spending time with people, changes places into second homes. We live their history, what we often call hinterland on the story. »

Understanding, not ignoring
So deeply attached to what have become war-torn regions, Lyse naturally focuses on the plight of civilians. Her report “Yarmouk”, produced in 2013 in the besieged Syrian city, earned her a Prix Bayeux. It shows a young boy collapsing in tears amidst the ruins, starving and without hope. “I wanted to show listeners and viewers how the most savage tactics of war, like the medieval “surrender or starve” affects people living through it. I also wanted them to understand that, despite the distance, these wars were and are also ours. That a world gone wrong is not the world we all aspire to.” At the heart of these conflicts, Lyse has thus witnessed the worst, but has also sought out and seen the best in human beings. “I think many correspondents of our time try to find glimmers of light and hope because I think all of us need that in order to survive. In times of war, we must show the glimpses of humanity to get through inhumanity.”

A debut book
To show everyday life in times of war and because “headlines and news reports provide a very small snapshot about people’s lives”, Lyse Doucet has recently explored a new way of storytelling; the seasoned journalist has published her very first book, A Finest Hotel in Kabul, in which she paints a portrait of the Afghan people through the personal stories of six employees at the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel. “In this book, I tell the stories of Afghans, but it could have been the people of Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, people living through grevious wars. In times like this, people have to find ways to get up every day and face the day. In times of war, not only does life go on, but it must go on, because people hold on to whatever is left of their lives, if they can.” From this new experience as an author, which she describes as “positive and gratifying”, Lyse emerges “all the more convinced that the work of journalism, of storytelling writ large, is ever so important in our time: not just the stories we tell, but how we tell them”.

Madam President
And how do we tell the story of what is happening in the world in the age of artificial intelligence and social media? She intends to put this question on the agenda of the next Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award fo War Correspondents, where she will chair the jury. Eager to reunite with her colleagues and friends, to honour the memory of those whose names are engraved on the Reporters’ Memorial, and to engage with the younger generation, Lyse Doucet is preparing very seriously for her role as President. “Winning an award from your own tribe is very special. I know this because I’ve experienced it myself. So I am fully aware of this great responsibility. ” The discussions promise to be rich this autumn in the small French town that foreigners awkwardly pronounce as “Bayou”. Lyse Doucet finds this very amusing! “Bayou, it’s like a bijou, isn’t it?! Bayou, our little bijou! ” Following Ed Vuliamy’s “Oscars of Journalism”, “Bayou, the little bijou of war correspondents” is preparing to welcome one of journalism’s finest gem. A shared honour.

SOME DATES

For several years now, Nikon has been committed to the Bayeux Award, demonstrating its fervent support for photojournalism and its lasting commitment to defending the values of truth and freedom of expression. Once again this year, this commitment is reflected in the renewal of its partnership with the Bayeux Award for War Correspondents, enabling it to continue to support and celebrate the work of photojournalists who capture poignant and crucial stories around the world. As well as sponsoring the Photo trophy, the brand will once again be supporting the outdoor exhibition in the streets of Bayeux, and will once again be hosting the Rencontres Nikon, a genuine opportunity for professionals and the public to meet and share ideas.

American Jon Lee Anderson, 68, has accepted the invitation from the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie for War Correspondents: this coming October the celebrated war reporter for The New Yorker – and author of the best-selling Che Guevara – will serve as President of the jury. A new experience for a lifelong adventurer…

A witness of the history of his time

As an avid reader of all kinds of biographies (and especially of contemporary explorers) Jon Lee became interested in adventure and exploration. Inspired and encouraged by his mother he soon developed an ambition to be a writer too. But not any kind of writer. “I wanted to be a witness of the history of my time.” Brought up on travel from his early childhood, aware of human conditions and naturally audacious, the blithe teenager began his quest. At first he was accompanied by contacts of his parents – he spent a week in rural Taiwan at nine years of age, hunting and fishing with one of his father’s employees, spent times in a ranch in Australia’s outback at 11 and 12, and at 13, joined an uncle and aunt who were geologists, living in Liberia – but soon took off on his own, travelling in the bush there and in East Africa. The continent of Africa was still in the throes of anti-colonial struggles, and he read the work of war correspondents, became more and more interested in politics and got a feel for journalism. Writer or war reporter? “The two had fused.” From Africa, Jon Lee soon went to South America, to Peru – where he got his first job reporting – and from there Central America and Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas were fighting against the Somoza dictatorship. As a young journalist he spent the next few years covering the various civil wars that were erupting in the region: Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Surinam…
He got to know and spend time with the guerrillas and some of their insurgent leaders, and to see how they lived and operated. “From that moment on, I began to understand war.” To understand but also to experience it. “I was shot at, I saw my first dead people, I felt the injustice, I was ambushed… Everything that can happen when you’re in the midst of a guerrilla war.”

A first book to understand the psychology of violence

Particularly interested in the condition of people who spend their lives at war and frustrated by not being able to dwell on this aspect of conflict in his articles, Jon Lee decided to write a book on the world of insurrection. Guerrillas: journeys in the insurgent world was published in 1992 after four years spent with insurgent groups in different parts of the world. “I returned to El Salvador, Palestine – particularly to Gaza – and I went to Afghanistan, Western Sahara and Burma. I spent time with fighters who were difficult and sometimes hostile. A few were psychopaths. Not everyone was open to outsiders. But most of them were people just like us, who, for various reasons had chosen to live their lives in resistance to what they saw as unfair or corrupt systems of government. I was trying to document their motivations, the way they lived, the ways they were creating a new society. I wanted to find answers to my questions and understand the psychology of violence. It was really the culmination of my lifelong quest to understand war.” He went on from this book to write a biography, of Che Guevara, which was a best-seller. “He was the incarnation, the personification of all these people I had been interested in.” The work was a kind of detective story. “And it was an opportunity to do something new and different.” He spent five years on the book before beginning what he describes as the “second part of his career ”.

Understanding war

A second part that began on 11 September 2001. “I felt I had to go back to Afghanistan because I knew the country.” Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Liberia, Mali, Lebanon… From one country to another, Jon Lee found answers to his questions. “Instead of becoming a naturalist – which I’d hoped to be as a child – I became someone who understood war. That doesn’t mean I approve of it, but I understand it. Going to war is the most terrible thing a man can do. And yet as terrible as it is, sometimes it becomes the only way for a society to survive. This is a reality of the story of humanity that has been going on for ever.” Jon Lee sometimes feels powerless in the face of events. “I can see conflicts develop and I know when they have reached the point of no return: it’s a terrible feeling to know that, at that moment, there is no other outcome but war.” Current events also mean the situation in his own country. As an American who has spent much of his life living outside of the United States, he has an outsider’s view of the current political situation: “I see the country as foreigners see it. But because of my nationality I feel I have to decode this “Trumpification” of American politics and try to help illuminate what’s going on and what we need to be aware of. ”
Jon Lee Anderson will be sharing his viewpoint on the United States and the world with his peers next October in Bayeux. A regular at the Prix who has already participated in the work of the jury, this time he will assume the mantle of President. In this he will succeed Clarissa Ward as well as two of his close colleagues and friends: Ed Vulliamy (2020) and Thomas Dworzak (2022).
The curious child, the teenager who was afraid of nothing (except mobs), the man who wanted to be a witness of the history of his time will have to decode and dissect the best in conflict journalism. “A tough task but a great honour.”

« How can you kill? How can you do that? As a boy I couldn’t understand how this could be. What also interested me was how societies dress up their wars with legal and even moral justifications. War is the most horrifying thing man does, and yet we have our bloodlettings and then often go back to being peaceful “civilised nations” again. This contradiction, this moral contradiction was at the root of my interest in war. »

SOME DATES

1986 Inside the League (with Scott Anderson)
1988 War Zones: Voices from the World’s Killing Grounds (with Scott Anderson)
1992 Guerrillas: journeys in the insurgent world, Times Books
1997 Che Guevara: a revolutionary life, Grove Press, New York Times Notable book of the year
1998Began working for The New Yorker, covering Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Liberia and Latin America
2003 The Lion’s Grave: dispatches from Afghanistan, Grove Press
2004 The Fall of Baghdad, Penguin Press
2020 Che, une vie révolutionnaire, Vuibert (graphic adaptation)
August 2025 To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban, Penguin Press

More than forty war correspondents have gathered in Bayeux on October 11^th and 12^th to debate and award seven trophies in the following categories: photo, print, radio, television, grand format television, young reporter (photo) and video image. Three honorary awards have been attributed: the Regional prize for students and trainees of Normandy (television), the Public’s Choice award (photo) and the Ouest-France – Jean Marin prize (print). Presided by Clarissa Ward, the international jury of the 31^st edition of the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents has reached its verdict…

“I was so impressed by the work that we were judging. So beautiful, bold, brave and vital… I wish we could award everyone. We had very important conversations in this room. The discussions and debates were also very illuminating for me: I learnt a lot from the perspectives and the different visions of my TV, radio, photo or print colleagues. It made me very proud to be a journalist. “
Clarissa Ward