Career
In the 1990s, Smith worked as an independent cameraman and video news journalist covering wars and conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, and elsewhere. Smith himself filmed the only uncontrolled footage of the Gulf War in 1991, after he bluffed his way into an active-duty unit while disguised as a British Army officer.
I applied for press accreditation to cover the Gulf War. I wasn't granted it. I had no chance as an independent and the mainstream news industry presented no opportunity for a beginner.
But I was determined to cover the conflict and so I impersonated a British Army officer and spent two months filming the conflict incognito. As a result, I managed to bring back the only uncontrolled footage of the war.
“ ” Vaughan Smith, Across the wire, NATO Review.During the '90s, Smith also ran Frontline News TV, an agency set up in 1989 to represent the interests of young video journalists who wanted to push the envelope of their profession. The workings of Frontline News TV captured the imagination of a generation of young freelancers and was described by the BBC world affairs editor John Simpson as one of the "high peaks of journalism". Its history has been detailed in a book Frontline: Reporting From the World's Deadliest Places, by David Loyn of the BBC.
During Smith's time as a freelance, he worked for many of the world's leading television stations and became an expert on, and advocator of, greater support for freelances operating in war zones. He has worked on journalist safety programmes.
As a freelance cameraman, he won, either individually or part of a team, 28 news awards (see below).
Smith has been shot twice, but escaped both times with light injuries. While he was filming the Serbian action at Prekaz in April 1998, a bullet lodged in his mobile telephone.
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