Only Cry for the Living with Hollie McKay | Mike Drop: Episode 69

About this video

Former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland interviews war correspondent Holly McKay about her journalism career, her book ‘Only Cry for the Living,’ and her years covering the Middle East. McKay discusses her firsthand reporting in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan—interviewing refugees, ISIS fighters, and displaced people—and reflects on how journalism has evolved, her Australian upbringing, and the challenge of maintaining balance and objectivity in modern war reporting.

Key takeaways

• McKay recounts interviewing diverse sources including Iraqi Kurds, Syrian refugees, Yazidi sex slave survivors, and ISIS members themselves to piece together human stories often lost in sanitized news coverage.
• She describes navigating dangerous environments while maintaining journalistic objectivity, learning early in her career to avoid becoming friends with subjects or being starstruck—skills crucial for both celebrity and conflict reporting.
• McKay attributes the decline in balanced journalism to the business model prioritizing extreme partisan angles for ratings and profit, contrasting with the emphasis on presenting both sides that she learned early in her Fox News career.

Episode details: published March 22, 2021 · 43K views · 2:54:26 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Stories told by Mike Ritland’s podcast guests are the guests’ own accounts, attributed to them — not independently verified. Commentary is Ritland’s, presented as his analysis.

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