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Pulse co-editor Idrees Ahmad on Under the Wire, the brilliant new documentary about Marie Colvin's killing.

"Colvin was killed hours before she could visit the hospital whose horrors she had wanted to convey fully...When Conroy balked at the prospect of his being saved instead of wounded children, one activist told him: “We want you out alive to tell our story. Please, go!” Like Colvin, they also believed in the power of journalism.

Journalism, however, proved inadequate to ...the task. Knowledge, it emerged, is not power; and power, when left unchallenged, can bend knowledge to its will. Doubt became a weapon: with politicians in the West reluctant to act, it kept public opinion conveniently inert. The Assad regime invested much effort in manufacturing uncertainty; and though the absence of independent witnesses did not make verification impossible, it certainly made it more onerous and time-consuming. By the time the truth of an atrocity could be established, news headlines had moved on. The regime suffered no consequences for killing or impeding journalists, while controlling their access had long-term advantages. The Assad government issued visas selectively and its minders herded journalists to stories that were consonant with its narrative. It rewarded deference and punished criticism. The journalist (and Review contributor) Janine di Giovanni, for example, was blacklisted for reporting critically on its repressive rule; the Financial Times’s Erika Solomon or Vice’s Isobel Yeung will likely never go back; but others, such as Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, and Charles Glass, can frequent Damascus unimpeded."