I know exactly the moment I should have quit journalism. It wasn't getting shot at and mortared while trying to escape from a shattered building. It wasn't while I was routinely mistreated and wronged by a well-known senior correspondent. And it wasn't one of those mornings when, exhausted, I would open my stuffed Inbox to reveal yet another asinine communication from management about how ‘doing more with less’ was actually an ‘efficiency’ and ‘an exciting new opportunity'.
No. The moment came one morning in Moscow, mid-2000, half way up the nondescript, dirty highway leading to Vnukovo airport. That was the morning I should have asked to stop the car, got out, turned around, and never looked back.
I had just joined the BBC from Associated Press TV, where as a producer I covered the wars in Chechnya and Kosovo, along with all the other human
