With eyes wide open

Pioneering New Zealand camerawoman Margaret Moth is the subject of a CNN World’s Untold Stories documentary ‘Fearless: The Margaret Moth Story’, in which former colleagues — including New Zealand photographer Barrington West and correspondents Christiane Amanpour, Matthew Chance and Michael Holmes — recall the events of 1992 when Moth, then 41, was seriously wounded in a sniper attack while filming in Sarajevo. Diagnosed with terminal cancer two years ago, Moth speaks about the attack and about her life at the frontlines of journalism. Moth joined CNN in 1990. She covered the Persian Gulf War, the rioting that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the civil war in Tbilisi, Georgia, for CNN before volunteering for the dangerous mission of filming in Sarajevo. As Amanpour sums up in the programme: “These days we’re very liberal with the use of the word ‘hero’. We’re very liberal with the use of the word ‘courageous’. But I think Margaret, more than anybody I’ve ever known in my whole life, lived those two words. She was heroic in how she kept going. She was heroic in how she didn’t consider herself special or a hero.” Moth says: “To me it is no different if I die in six weeks or in twenty years. I don’t think it matters how long you live as long as you can say that you have got everything out of life.”