Five Things I've Learned as a Foreign Correspondent - Lara Setrakian at TEDxYerevan

Lara Setrakian is a Dubai-based correspondent for Bloomberg Television and ABC News, covering business, politics, and major events in the Middle East. She has interviewed high-profile leaders and led the network's coverage of the Arab uprisings throughout 2011. As part of Bloomberg Television's on-the-ground coverage of the crisis in Egypt, Setrakian reported live from Tahrir Square as President Hosni Mubarak ended his three-decade rule.

When I was growing up in New Jersey

I dreamed of having a passport to everywhere.

That was my code for the opportunity

to see new lands and meet new people

and to take in especially the extremes,

the ends of every spectrum, so that you could

understand where everything else falls in between.

I got that passport as a foreign correspondent

for ABC News and Bloomberg Television.

It's taken me to see life in the Islamic Republic.

It's taken me to hunt for pirates
off the coast of Somalia.

It's taken me to the heart of the revolution

in Tahrir Square.

And like Garman said, wherever I go

I try to take snapshots of culture.

In the news reports, but also for myself,

I write them down in a notebook like this.

This one's come with me from London to Kathmandu.

And this is a snapshot of what's inside.

In the middle there جعل أحلامك الحقيقية،
Literally, make your dreams real.

It's from a home mortgage ad in Tunisia.

And than on the right there,
"Ridha Allah Al-Walidain"

my friend Sulaf in Jordan wrote that

in memory of her father.

It's an Arabic Muslim concept of the special

karma you get, a blessing from parents,

passed from mother or father to child.

A colleague from Turkey wrote this one:

"Deliye hergun bayram"
If you're mad everyday is a feast.

In other words, if you are just crazy enough,

you can have everything you want.

That's Arabic for .الاندفاع يأتي من الشيطان.

"anything too rush, probably comes from the devil."

This one is kind of blurry, "Partzratzeer Partzratzoor".

Rise up and bring others with you.

An below that:

"Voneh jeeshtek, voruh perceeh an guh leenee."

Have faith that what's true and what's right
is gonna work out in the end.

I learned that from our TEDx organizer Kristine.

And the last one: "Satyameva Jayate".

It's an Indian proverb:

"Truth should win no matter who else losses."

So traveling around you fill a lot of notebooks,

and you learn a lot and even just

the act of doing journalism evolves you,

gives you lessons for life,

and I am so grateful for all of them that

I wanted to share some of them with you today.

So here are five things I've learned

as a foreign correspondent that you can too.

No. 1: Perception can count as much as intention.

It's not just what you intend, it's what you project

that can get you in or out of trouble.

I learned that traveling to Saudi Arabia.

I landed in the middle of the night,

I was making my way to Riyadh on my own,

and I realized that because of how I look

I have to be extra careful.

If you are a western women and
you look foreign in Saudi Arabia

for the most part people won't mess with you.

Because of my dark features I have this mix

of an eastern face and western attitude.

And I had to be aware of how that could be interpreted.

I had to be situationally aware.

I might have to talk a little softer or keep a low profile.

And I just thought of it as putting my hand on

a volume of me-ness and adjusting slightly

just to make sure you stay safe.

No. 2: Fear is amplified with distance.

The further away you are from something,

the scarier it seems.

And I learned that over time traveling to Lebanon,

a country that is routinely on the brink of civil war.

Everything is calm, then all of the sudden,

a bombing in Beirut or a shootout on the border.

And everyday different parties at each other's throats,
armed to the teeth.

And from afar it can seem pretty scary,

especially when it's just this big bubble of fear,

and the airport's shut down,

and you need to drive your way into Beirut.

But as you get closer you can localize the fear.

Figure out what's real and what's hype.

Call people who know the terrain.

Figure out how to keep yourself safe.

And just generally, get a sense of

the objective volume, not the subjective fear.

And that applies for a lot of things in your life.

At home, at work, a lot of things that seem threatening,

seem more threatening from far away,

because fear is amplified with distance.

If you get up close, you can get a sense

of what's real and what's hype.

You can localize the threat,

attack what you need and keep yourself safe.

No. 3: It's not who you know or what you know.

It's how you work. How hard and how smart.

Life, like journalism, is not a perfect meritocracy,

but effort counts.

When I started in media in New York City,

I would often hear people say,

"It's who you know, it's not what you know."

And I just didn't believe it
because I didn't know anybody.

My parents were immigrants,
we all started from scratch.

And I just had to believe that that wasn't true.

And then a producer friend of mine, David Katz,

in a miraculous moment of conversation
turns to me and says,

"Lara, it's not who you know or what you know,

it's how you work. How hard, how smart.

Because if you do it right,
you'll learn what you need to know.

And you'll meet who you should along the way.

In the Middle East there's a word for all the influence,

all the benefits you get from knowing the right people

and being able to pull strings.

That word is: wasta.

It gets used a lot.

How did that guy get a visa? Wasta.

How did that girl get into collage? Wasta.

How did those guys build a factory on the beach? Wasta.

Everybody hates it, everybody wants it.

But the truth is, if you work hard and you work smart,

you can build your network, work your wasta,

use your wasta for good and not for evil.

But if you just through your hands up

because you weren't born into the wastocracy,

that's giving up way too soon.

No. 4: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take,

and some of the ones you do.

That's borrowing some of the Wayne Gretzky's,

but the idea is that you have to try with abandon

and bounce back unscared and unscarred

when it doesn't work out.

I have to remind myself that every time

I try for a high profile interview.

I wanted to interview the president of Somalia.

That meant putting in a request, finding his people,

contact who knew his people,

getting to the Horn of Africa with cameramen,

and then sitting around and waiting.

And when you're in the middle of trying

and you not sure if it's going to workout,

it can feel pretty bad.

And it can feel much worse if it doesn't work out.

That time it did. But other times it doesn't.

And the key is to bounce back.

Treat the wins like the losses.

Just figure that you getting some of lifes'

necessary fails out of the way.

You can't weaken and you can't stop trying.

No. 5, my favorite: People are better than you think.

They're not angels, they're not perfect,

but they're better than you think.

And that's because most of the time

we tend to fill in the blanks

of what we don't know with the negative.

All of us sitting in the audience here,

we could see someone who's well-dressed

and assume she's a snob,

or see someone who is super-busy

and assume he's self-obsessed,

because we fill the blanks with a negative

when we don't have to.

For decades under Hosni Mubarak in Egypt,

the Coptic Christian minority and Muslim majority

were at each other's throats.

There was a lot of distrust, escalating violence,

bombings, shootings and whoever was

responsible for it, whoever was behind it,

was dropping that blanket of distrust

and negative assumption

across those two communities.

Then the most beautiful moments of the revolution

in Tahrir Square: they were up close.

You had Christians circling the square,

protecting the core,

while the Muslims bowed to the ground in prayer.

And then for Sunday mass it was the reverse.

You had the Muslims protecting the core,

while the Christians were bowing in prayer.

Once they were up-close and on the same side,

they stopped making those negative assumptions.

The word for optimist in Armenian

is lavades - seer of good.

Look for the good in people,

for your sake and for theirs.

I am not saying be naive.

I am not saying don't be careful.

I'm just saying there is no point seeing darkness

and shadows when you don't have to.

Especially when they are not there.

So in conclusion, how do I interpret reality?

Turn truth into television or at least try?

By absorbing everything I can about the people

and the places around me and then doing

everything I can to convey their essence.

And you do that by flexing

your empathy, sincerity,
hustle, humility and respect.

By knowing when to ask for help,

when you're out of your depth,

and how to ask for help graciously and gratefully

and with the readiness to be proven wrong.

That's what I've learned in my work.

I've taken it through my life

and it's made me so much richer.

Thank you.

(Applause)