What ISIS, Bombs & Deadlines Taught Her About Performing Under Pressure

What does it take to perform when your life — or someone else’s — is on the line?

Award-winning journalist Margaret Coker spent two decades reporting from 32 countries, often in the middle of war zones and political chaos. In this episode, she sits down with me to share how she made tough decisions under extreme pressure, stayed clear-headed in the face of danger, and learned to lead herself and her team in unpredictable environments.

Whether you’re in boardrooms or battlefields, Margaret’s approach to uncertainty and decisive action will change how you think about performance.

Connect with Margaret:
💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-coker-14a48520/
🌐 Her new project, The Current: https://thecurrentga.org/author/margaret-coker-2/
✖️X (Twitter): https://x.com/mideastmargaret
📚 Book: The Spymaster of Baghdad 

Follow me for more:
🌐 Website: www.toughness.com
📸 Instagram: @paddysgram
💼 LinkedIn: Paddy Steinfort
✖️ X (Twitter): @paddysx

 

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Margaret Coker: Sighting happens rarely. Uncertainty happens all the time. To me, the answer is not to give up to me. The answer is bring it on with a bigger team around you. As a journalist, yes, you have to be curious to step outside of yourself and step outside of your own entitlement so that you can tell a tale from someone else's point of view.

If you feel vulnerable, if you feel scared to me, the answer is.

[00:00:30] Paddy Steinfort: Welcome to the Toughness Podcast. My name's Patty Steinfort, your host, and today we have an amazing guest. Uh, if, if there is a saying that you can judge someone's life by the amount of stories they can tell, well. Guest had multiple lives. Coco is a prize-winning investigative journalist who two decades stories from 30 countries across four continents.

And specifically since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, she was really locked in on the Middle East writing about corruption, counter-terrorism, and obviously warfare. She's been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her work. That included multiple stints as bureau chief in Baghdad and Turkey for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is the author of the Spy Master of Baghdad.

A fascinating book about getting behind the lines inside the Iraqi intelligence team that that infiltrated ISIS amazing stories and really looking forward to digging into it. Welcome to the show, Margaret. 

[00:01:23] Margaret Coker: Thanks for having me. It's exciting to be able to talk about my life. 

[00:01:26] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. Wow. What, and, and as I said, what's some amazing stories that are, that are gonna come out here?

I'm seeing right now? I think you are in Savannah, Georgia, is that correct? 

[00:01:35] Margaret Coker: That's right, yeah. I was sort of born and raised, um, largely in the American South. I come from a long line of military officers, so we grew up, um, moving around place to place. But the south is my sort of cultural and, uh. My cultural safe spot, I think I could say correct, 

and it is a, an actual safe spot as well.

I've, I've been through Savannah, Georgia once in my life. I worked with a colleague. We did a little house swap one time and I was like, wow, this is like picturesque south, like just the most quiet. You know, the big huge weeping willow trees and the grand old buildings, and I can't imagine anywhere further from the scenes of Baghdad and warfare.

And so I'm wondering how, it might be a little hint that you grew up in a military family, but how does a girl who grew up in the South of America. End up being the bureau chief in the middle of a war zone, 

[00:02:28] Margaret Coker: um, accidentally is the short answer. And I don't mean that to sound at all, like all great storm.

Yeah, well we, we grew up moving around a lot, so I became used to, you know, jumping up, you know, after getting comfortable in a town, in a school with friends, um, jumping up, leading that all behind and going someplace new. And, uh, that was tough as a kid. Uh, you know, you, you have constancy around your home life.

Um, I had a very loving family, um, mom and dad who showed affection, you know, and challenged us to be all we could be. But you still have to, as a kid, kind of wake up in a new place and go to a new school and find someone to talk to. Find out who the mean girls are and avoid them. And so, you know, you also get a chance once you start digging into your new environment of telling people what another place, another state, another country is like.

And so I had a love of storytelling and sort of an appreciation for being able to describe. Places that no one else had been to and sort of call out, you know, facts and, um, disinformation when I saw them. My biggest trip as a kid was, um, I grew up in a Cold War warrior household. I was, um, selected to go on an overseas trip as a high school student to what was then the Soviet Union.

And it was, uh, children of US military officers go meet your enemy, um, Soviet, uh, red Army officer of the kids come to the us. And so I spent six weeks, uh, in a small group away from home in this new country, a place where I was taught, you know, that was the, the evil empire. And I realized that actually there's a lot of things that were familiar.

There are a lot of people who thought and acted and sort of dressed like me. And, um, I thought if someone wanted to pay me to do this for a living. You know, tell stories from overseas and experience new things. I thought, yes, that's what I'm gonna do. Amazing. So I became a journalist. Um, I didn't mean to go to war zones, but I grew up and the War on Terror is, you know, it's been 20 years, um, this September.

It's the longest wars that America's ever fought. And you know, this just happened to coincide with my career arc. Yeah. 

[00:04:34] Paddy Steinfort: So you think of it. 

[00:04:34] Margaret Coker: Yeah. So as an ambitious journalist who wanted to be on the front page, you know, that's where the news was. And so I went right, 

[00:04:40] Paddy Steinfort: the young girl who went over to, uh, to Russia on that, uh, on that kid swap effectively seems like a reality TV show.

[00:04:46] Paddy Steinfort: How old were you at that point? 

[00:04:48] Margaret Coker: I was 15. I was 16. Okay. 

[00:04:50] Paddy Steinfort: So as a 15-year-old, right, that's the first time you're like, wow, someone paid me to do this. This would be pretty cool. And now fast forward all the way to now, a lot has transpired, as you said, the longest war in the US history and. You've returned home after, let's, let's say, I mean, obviously you came back from the Cold War visit, but you were overseas for a long, long time and you come back and I know from talking to guests on this podcast also some work I've done with soldiers, uh, special forces.

[00:05:19] Paddy Steinfort: A lot of people return with things they didn't wanna return with and didn't think they were gonna get when they were over there. Right. How, how have you been able to transition back to normal life in Savannah? Having seen what you've seen and, and done what you've done? 

[00:05:34] Margaret Coker: It's a question that, um, my husband and I, you know, talk about quite a lot because I was very well ready to come back to, to the States.

Um, and he was someone who, who wanted to stay abroad for, for more years than I did. I was constantly homesick as, as I was overseas. And, um, unlike. Soldiers who are in war zones as a duty that they sign up for, there's no way to escape. You know, every time that I had a new assignment, you know, sort of going in, in three year increments, I always had a choice.

I could come back home or I could stay, and so there was a certain amount of resilience sort of built into my life. I, I didn't have to live, I didn't have to work, I didn't have to cover these foreign lands and, um, see trauma and see conflict. I kept choosing to do it. For many of, um, my colleagues who are foreign correspondents, you know, there's, there's definitely different personality types.

There's people who are running away from, from normal life. There's people who have an addiction to the adrenaline and to danger. And I, I'm not either of those two people. I'm, I'm someone who is fascinated by different cultures. I'm fascinated by the ways in which. Normal human beings. You know, people like me who come from, we don't have any great men or women in history in my family.

You know, we're just normal folks and normal folks around the world survive every day in the most trying and frustrating circumstances imaginable. And I was really obsessed about learning. More about how they did that because it is those people really that then build a backbone of a nation and help villages and countries get through trauma.

[00:07:13] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, I was so normally a question we ask most of the performers or people do, I would re include you in that as a performer. You're obviously a writer and artist, but sometimes you presenting to camera as well, and there's a lot of stuff that goes on, which we'll explore later in the episode around what you have to deal with while you're doing that.

But normally on this show, we'll ask people. Who are on the front lines in their arenas. What does toughness mean to you? What in your experience, but you might have hinted there, that your definition is much more about the everyday person who can get through whatever, right? We're all tr just trying to perform day to day and get through.

Is that true for you? What does toughness mean to you, gi, given everything you've seen at both? It's a horrific end of the scale of what humans can do, but also at the amazing end. 

[00:07:58] Margaret Coker: Yeah, it is sometimes just hard enough for people to get up every day and get dressed and go to work or feed their kids or just get by.

My job over the last 20 years as a foreign correspondent meant that I was doing things that was beyond a normal trend line for most Americans, and I enjoyed it. To me, that wasn't. That that didn't take much toughness because I was enjoying it so much. But the other end of toughness for me was that made everyone else scratch their heads when I'd come back home and tell my stories is that it became normal to work 12, 14 hour, 16 hour days.

It became normal to sleep in uncomfortable beds, in uncomfortable places. It became normal to talk to strangers. It became normal to to learn different languages. And for me as a person, as a personality, I'm not really an extrovert by nature. I am a very private person. I'm a homebody, and at the same time, I'm attracted to this sort of, I guess, edgy lifestyle.

Although I wasn't looking for an edge, I was looking for, I was curious about, I'm curious about the world. I'm curious about different people. And so just every day as a person, as a journalist, I wake up. And I feel like I'm performing, as you say, I feel like I, I put on a mental role as a journalist because I need to go talk to strangers and I have to show up and present myself as someone who's not my authentic self.

And that's all about trying to get people to feel comfortable with you, tell you their secrets, and get them in a place where they're vulnerable towards you. 

[00:09:24] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. And, and absolutely. It's hard. And I think, so you've mentioned here that it's really tough for just everyone. These days dealing with covid, all of the uncertainty around that, but that particularly, that word uncertainty, really defines a lot of your work in those battle zones, where the uncertainty isn't just, is my boss gonna yell at me today, or am I gonna have a positive covid test?

It's like, could I be captured and killed? We'll get to that level of threat in a moment, but I wonder when you say you are putting on something that's not your authentic self, I'm curious to dig in there because that word curious, you said yourself that a starting point for you is curiosity, is what really drew you into this.

And I would actually say I. That my experience with performers who have to work under that level of pressure, where there's lives on the line, that curiosity is sometimes one of the biggest strengths possible, where in the face of amazing uncertainty bets, that actually all involves a high level of threat.

Being able to be curious in that situation keeps the fear at bay, keeps the. Your internal response of, like you said, some people are attracted to, they run towards the fire when perhaps they shouldn't. Some people are running away from something else, but curiosity allows you to sit there. A stranger who could be dangerous and still explore things.

Do you feel like that's actually a true statement, that your curiosity was a strength and probably a defining part of your toughness in those environments? 

[00:10:48] Margaret Coker: Absolutely, and that is, again, if you're someone who only likes to eat a certain type of food, if you're someone who has to be in bed by 10. If you're someone who needs a certain mattress in order to fall asleep at night, my my like is, was not gonna be for you.

But if you're ready to get outside of yourself, if you're, if you are curious, if you are able to put a thinking cap on and say, I'm gonna experience. Someone else's life. For a moment, I'm gonna experience how it is for a family of refugees whose grandfathers were killed by Saddam Hussein in his torture chambers as someone who have had to leave their home five times because violent is Islamist fighters are taking over their village again and again.

They don't have the luxury of really being able to say, I have a normal life. And when you. Are ready as a journalist who has to tell their stories. Yes, you have to be curious to step outside of yourself and step outside of your own entitlement and step outside of your own expectations so that you can tell tale from someone else's point of view.

Yeah, and I've heard you say there step outside of yourself. You said it a few times. I'm curious to explore that, particularly in reference to this. I mentioned before that. The threats that you face in some of those uncertain times are over and above what a normal person is facing in Covid, even though that's really uncomfortable for most of us.

But if we're putting it on the level of a Navy Seal who is kicking down a door of a village in Afghanistan or of a heart surgeon who if things go wrong, they're losing the life of the patient on the table. Your level of threat for some of this uncertainty is not too far removed from that. When I, I was talking to my brother in the lead up to this episode, just being like, what?

Gimme some inside scoop of what it is that are the common themes. My brother being a journalist, and he said, first thing, because you did some stuff with isis. He says, anything to do with isis. It comes along with the threat of you end up in an orange jumpsuit, being beheaded on camera. That was his exact words, and I was like, wow, that's a really strong statement, but it's true.

And so I'm curious to explore that and if you're okay to share it. It's hard for regular folks like myself and probably most of the listeners to consider even just being in that environment, whether it's dropping in for a five minute, five hour layover somewhere, or you are sitting in a village interviewing people and knowing that either horrible things are happening just yards from you in the next village down the track.

Or potentially horrible things could happen to these people that you're talking to, purely because they're talking to you and maybe even could happen to you. So with all of that, that creates immense, even just as I described that I feel my body reacting to the threats that are involved there. And if you're in it, obviously you, your physiology reacts.

Yeah. Back to the start of this question, when you say get outside yourself, is that a step that you take or you're conscious of to separate the emotion and that you are physiological response from what you're actually trying to do on the job there? 

[00:13:45] Margaret Coker: Yeah, for sure. And I think part of that skillset comes with me having to mentally toughen up just every morning to to talk to strangers.

So that's already part of my daily routine. And then when you get into a situation, again, to be clear, I would be based in countries that are unstable and conflict reed, but I also have lived in pretty stable environments as well. Well, having a nice abilla in Dubai or life in London over this 20 year period, I wasn't totally out in the wilds, but having said that as well, I wasn't someone who would take assignments willy-nilly on on the frontline.

I have been embedded with US forces, US Marines, combat units who were doing frontline fighting. But really I think the most mentally tough times that I've been in conflict zones are actually the waiting for something to happen. 'cause I think the dirty little secret that we don't actually comprehend very much in, in a conflict is that fighting happens rarely.

Uncertainty happens all the time. And so over a 24 hour period, you might have bullets flying for 30 minutes. But you have to wait it out for the other 23 hours, 30. And if you were living in Baghdad, which is a beautiful town, right? It is. It is one of the mo most ancient cities in the world, the former center of human civilization.

It's a place that's very urbane with coffee shops and night clubs and universities and parks. It is a place where people commute into work and there's restaurants. But in a time in the mid two thousands when terrorism was at its peak, when Al-Qaeda in Iraq was terrorizing the nation and Shia Timas were terrorizing the citizens of Baghdad.

You could walk out of the door every day not knowing whether you would see your husband again or see your children again because of the random violence that was happening due to terrorism. So firefights are one thing. But random violence is another thing, and that is really the tool that breaks apart a social fabric and can also break you apart mentally because that uncertainty is a killer.

It makes you lose weight, it makes your hair go gray. It makes your physiological reaction so extreme that it's hard for you when light is normal to return back to that normal. And I have friends in Baghdad who, who lost their parents and lost their loved ones. They never returned home one day from work.

And that was the routine way of life for a very long time. 

[00:16:10] Paddy Steinfort: What you've just described, there is another level that unless you've been there, it's very hard to actually, it's like you can read from a menu, but unless you've tasted the dish, you don't really know what you're reading. And I'm curious that having eaten from that dish regularly, maybe not all the time as you said, but you've been there and lived with that uncertainty of maybe I don't see my husband again.

Or when are the bullets gonna fly today? What skills did you develop? What coping strategies did you develop? I. To handle that constant level of uncertainty, not there like extreme. Oh my God, we could die right now, as you said. At the three on the threat scale, but it's always a three. 

[00:16:51] Margaret Coker: Yeah. I think you learn how to be decisive.

You stop equivocating. You say there's threat outside. Just a very simple sort of day in my life. Let's say we're in the mid two thousands in Baghdad and it is this level of of threat where brand violence is happening, and you're probably not going to be targeted as a person, but you might end up at the wrong place at the wrong time and a bomb goes off and you die.

So you have to make a decision. I've got work to do. I've gotta go outside. I've got three people I need to interview, and you get the best intelligence possible. Is that intersection clear? Is there a high value target or in VIP who lives next to the place that you're going to go in order to do your interview?

You say, how important is that interview? What's the actual risk and reward factor every day? Should I go out to dinner tonight or not? And you learn to live with your decisions, right? You learn to say, I can't be scared. The risk is there and I've got to live. And so you start to create a pattern of decision making.

I think that helps in. Back in normal life in America, right, there's, you can be paralyzed by your choices. You can be paralyzed by fear, and sometimes you just have to say, I can only do so much and I'm gonna, I'm gonna live my life today and tomorrow I'll take a step back. But I think that for now, the risk is worthwhile for what I need to accomplish.

And you also start to, you stop taking things for granted, right? There's not a day that goes by where I don't tell my husband that I love him. I don't put it off. If I feel like I need to say something to my mother, I write her a quick text or phone her. I don't say I can wait until next week, and that's part of being decisive.

It's part about living in the present, and it's also part of not taking your life and your blessings for granted. 

[00:18:41] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, and a couple of great lessons there of firstly, secondly, as you said, there not taking things for granted, being grateful and having keeping perspective. But the first part is really interesting to me in terms of the risk calculus almost, I might put it where you're able to say there is a certain level of risk, but the decisions can, but there's no such thing as a perfect decision with full knowledge and my ability, our ability to move into an unturned situation, assess the risks that need to be assessed.

Get whatever information is possible, but not wait extra time so you can get more info. Today is today and I've gotta go do what I've gotta do today, and to have it clear also, to have the confidence of knowing that, like if it turns out this was a bad decision, either I stayed at home and I missed my interview, even though there was no threat or vice versa, I.

To be able to live with that down the track and not have regrets of, oh, I could've done the other. If it's a 55, 45 decision, there's a pretty strong argument either way, and I end up going one way, which could've gone the other. The courage to be able to live with conviction there and push through is a real key part of handling stressful situations.

If you've got an example of that where it was a borderline like 50 50 call. And you've gone anyway because that's a key part of being able to do your job. 

[00:19:55] Margaret Coker: Yeah. There's so many, uh, where to start? 

[00:19:59] Paddy Steinfort: Give us the best. Here's the way I describe it. Sometimes when I'm asking the question, what's your best sweaty palms moment or your best, it's too late to turn back now.

Like I've gotta go, they talk about this in the Navy SEAL community of the mission critical team, where there is an immersive environment that actually is, once you are in the moment, it's worse to go back. So I've started the presentation. I've started the live cross. I've entered the village with all of my guys on my six, and I've kicked the door in.

They, we can't stop now. The ball's gone up, the tip off's happened. The NBA game is underway. There's no going back. Where, okay, I have to commit. I can't keep thinking about what else I could have done. Once you're in it or you're on that precipice almost, is that a better example? What's the best example for you in your career as a foreign correspondent?

[00:20:45] Margaret Coker: Yeah, I might pivot and say that there's definitely times in my work life where I felt the sweaty palms, and there's a certain amount of control you lose as you've decided that you're going forward at that moment. I will say though, that as a woman just writ large. As a foreign correspondent or anything else.

There are moments like that on a constant basis where as a woman, you find yourself in situations saying. I think I shouldn't be here anymore, or I think that this person man, is much more sketchy than I originally obsessed in be. And so those can be personal moments or professional moments, and when they cross in between, they get even more hairy because you have your internal, your gut is clenching, your arm hair is raised, you know that you're in danger, and then you have.

To be able to also say, I'm not sure how salty of language I can use here, but you have to say, fuck it. And I don't care if my boss is gonna yell at me because I didn't get this scoop or I didn't get this interview because this man is a danger to me. I don't know what he believes in. He's a man and he's dangerous and he's a predator, and I'm getting the fuck out of here.

There's been times just, I'm in a luxurious hotel in Dubai, right, and it's late at night and you've been asked to arrive for an interview and you go up in an elevator. And the person you're interviewing comes in with you, and we're supposed to go up to the big suite for the interview. You're all in professional clothes.

There's absolutely no way that the signal can be crossed. You are a journalist, you're not a call girl, and you're trapped in an elevator with someone who wants a call girl. In those kinds of situations, those men are, I'm glad I am who I am. Right? I have enough self-confidence and enough physical training to make people sorry for stepping over my boundaries, but those are the decisions that I.

Beat myself up for more because. If I wasn't there to do my job, I wouldn't be there at all, and those are the situations where I feel like I should somehow know better. It's easier to navigate sometimes a conflict zone because the warning signs are all there in front of you rather than be in a situation which actually feels quote unquote normal.

Where there are professionals in New York and London and Sydney all over the world, women have to grapple with those sort of things all the time. Some, sometimes on one-on-one situations, I feel like I might not know. I might not understand the body language of threat as much as I understand the threat levels in uncertain conflict zone, if that makes any sense.

[00:23:17] Paddy Steinfort: It makes sense logically to me. Yeah. Obviously I haven't lived that experience. Sure. But it is a great example to me of the crossover between some of these skills that we're talking about at the coalface and the fact that it applies to everyday life situations. Perhaps even more importantly. Serious instances than just how well you can handle an interview in, in a village In Bagdad, 

[00:23:39] Margaret Coker: there's, I, I, probably nine outta 10 women listeners will have had an experience like that.

You don't have to go overseas and you don't have to be in an unpronounceable place in order to feel a threat to your person and. What I think is the trick, especially as women, is not to beat yourself too hard about getting into those situations where you have no place to run. Your control is limited and still realize it's actually not your fault.

It's not your fault that this shit is happening to you right now. 

[00:24:10] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. A really interesting example that you shared at the start of that story around your ability to say, fuck it. I don't care if my boss gets angry or I don't care if I lose this lead, whatever it is, like there's a core value of my own personal safety that I need to do, and this, that's a tough thing to do.

I'll use a non, a different example, but a similar premise that Simone Biles standing up and pulling out at the start of the Olympics final with her team. Has been in some instances, celebrated in some instances, absolutely torn to shreds because it's selfish and it's prima donna, and it's all these things, right?

But in essence, that's the same decision, the same stance of, no, fuck it. I know I'm gonna get hell for this. I know this will potentially tarnish me down the track. I don't fucking care. This is about my own health and safety. And that is sometimes a tougher thing to do, to look after yourself than it is to go through with what you're supposed to do.

Especially if you've, if been brought up to be the person that puts yourself second, who is there to make everyone else happy, who is there as a vessel for other people's dreams and hopes and desires. And that isn't a Western concept. That is something that families quit on. Daughters around the world, and sons too, to be fair.

And so really getting in touch with your limits, understanding again, what is recklessness, which puts yourself into a whole new. Layer of physical and mental danger versus what is healthy curiosity that allows you to expand in ways outside yourself that bring you joy and bring you adventure and still let you come home at night.

Satan sound, 

[00:25:57] Paddy Steinfort: yeah, we would talk about it. If I was doing a one-on-one coaching session with a performer and this came up, we will talk about moving towards what you love rather than away from what you hate. But not moving towards what you love at the expense of further injury or damage, like in a negative way.

You may have answered this question or started to at least, but it brings, like we've mentioned, safety there a number of times both in your work but also in the context of everyday life that some of our listeners may have or probably have experienced. Your journalism, whether it's overseas or even at home, has led to criminal trials.

Regulatory investigation of big global banks and finance is the dismissal of 14 corrupt police officers, freedom for three people who were wrongly convicted and incarcerated. If you're exposing people who are breaking the law, then logic flows it. There's probably there, there're probably no WANs in breaking the law again to hurt you.

And so that creates an, we've talked about the stress in the battle zones, the behind the scenes investigative nature of your work means that. You're also putting yourself in danger in a different way. And then there's the everyday danger of being a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time in this world.

Has there ever been a point in your job where you've considered quitting because of that safety, that the fear that is constantly there, the mental stress of that rock? And if so, how did you get through it? You're obviously still in the business, so I guess let's talk about that in a second. Have you ever considered quitting because of safety?

No, no. As a matter of fact, I haven't, and maybe it's about where I've come from. I grew up with a family that instilled a very strong work ethic in all of us. There's, and there's a certain amount of resilience that comes with that, right? Mentally, physically, whatever. We were always expected to pull our own weight.

That work was something that was honorable, and so giving up a job because of a mental wiggle is something that. Would be really hard to do 

[00:27:57] Paddy Steinfort: a mental wiggle. Let me pause on my own G on that. A mental wiggle. What are you referring to when you say a mental wiggle? 

[00:28:05] Margaret Coker: If you feel unsafe? I always, I feel like I have learned enough tools and tactics to control my environment, so that uncertainty and fear.

Physical fear, they're transitory. You can gather a lot of intelligence and surround yourself with smart people who, and I don't mean smart like a PhD, smart in the streets, smart in the way of their world and smart of the way of their culture. There are, again, there are. Tons of millions of people who navigate their way through conflict every single day.

And if you're observant enough, you can swim in their stream and figure out ways in which to be safe too. And so this, again, physical safety isn't something that I put. I spend a whole lot of time worrying about, in part because I spend a whole lot of time preparing. You pull together your own ground intelligence.

You don't go out and do things recklessly you. You ask yourself questions. You're observant, and you realize you know where danger is and you mitigate it by knowing where it is first and foremost. Again, I'm not someone who flies towards bullets and never. Really would consider myself that sort of person.

There are bad people in the world. Absolutely. And for sure, and they deserve to be outed. They deserve a spotlight put on them because I, growing up American, I really believe that the power dynamic between the people and the people in power, the people should be more powerful than they are. And that's the lens at which I come at my journalism.

So I'm again, not a reckless person whatsoever. I come home every night, I feed my dog and my cat at six. Yeah, I'm someone who likes to take care of those around me, and by doing that, I'm doing my job well. As a journalist, you can't do this alone. I think what you need to do is have a good team around you, and some of that is support staff for sure.

Some of it is having good lawyers who stand with you and fight those battles administratively in courts or behind the scenes. And again, I feel like there's. Ways in which you surround yourself with support. If you feel vulnerable, if you feel scared to me, the answer is not to give up to me. The answer is bring it on and bring it on with a bigger team around you.

[00:30:25] Paddy Steinfort: Love it. Love it. That's a rare, you got to the second part of my question, whether it was considering quitting or even if you didn't ever get to that point, you mitigated it by being prepared, by having people in your corner. And then probably the one little untied thread there that I wanna pull out is.

Let's say you have been fully prepared and then you get into a, and you have the right people around you. But even with all that, there is uncertainty and risk and you still get into a place where there, there is some anxiety that comes up or fear. Is that the moment where you pull, where you draw on the skill of going outside yourself as you described it, like how do you do that?

[00:31:01] Margaret Coker: Yeah, I have uncles who were combat medics in Vietnam. I know some of my family are also serving in emergency services. You have to be able to perform in the moment because other people's lives are at risk, and so compartmentalizing isn't a really important talent. I know that in today's world of mental health professionals, there are gonna be many people who cringe at that statement.

And it's true, it is cringeworthy if that's all you do with your life, right? If all you do is compartmentalize your feelings, if all you do is never process, if you can't leave that period of high stress and deal with the things that you're thinking and feeling and find a way to process it, then I think that's definitely the trouble sign.

But for so many people who ha are in stressful situations, the only way to pull through is. Not to feel it. And as a journalist, again, I have the immense blessing of being a professional observer. Stories are not about me. Stories are about the people who I'm with, and whether it's a foreign culture or my own backyard.

I am not the story and I feel things about what I see and witness, and then I have to bring those home and then I have to find out the support system that can help me process that later on. 

[00:32:19] Paddy Steinfort: And so you, that leads to a great example there of, yeah, we've gotta compartmentalize. But you touched on a very important point.

That is a vital skill when you're dealing with stress and high stakes. But it also is, if it's overused, like any strength, if you only do that one thing, you're gonna get yourself into trouble. So. For you? What, who, who was that or what was that process for you to be able to compartmentalize, but then when you did have time and space, how did you process that stuff?

Did you have a support base? Was it your husband? Was there someone, did you go to therapy? What was that for you? 

[00:32:51] Margaret Coker: Yeah, I've done both actually. And if I didn't go to therapy, I would've lost my husband and then being able to talk. Not just about my work with my husband, my, my husband's actually in the same profession.

So it really is not about what you witness every day, it's allowing yourself to be vulnerable in who you are. Being able to actually, like I. Turn off your work life and turn back on your authentic, more authentic self and be comfortable in that. Be comfortable in not being a superwoman. Be comfortable in the idea that you're not always right and you're not always in control, and if you're actually gonna have a healthy relationship with someone, you're gonna have to be able to deal with that as well.

This has been a learning curve. My marriage has lasted for 16 years. It hasn't always been upwards in a straight line, but it definitely is. It's much more healthy now since I'm able not to be so super at home. 

[00:33:47] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, I've gotta tell my producers to put a little round of applause in the background. Now, when you say the marriage has lasted 16 years, often one of the first casualties of war, but of anyone who does these high stress jobs, and I'm not even just talking about guests on this show, is anyone who's involved in stress, personal relationships are one thing that goes out the window pretty quickly.

And you mentioned there having a good relationship with other people. I'd even extrapolate that and say, having a good relationship with yourself, which is a. Another common collateral damage of people trying to do great things in life. And so let me start to bring this full circle to where you are now.

You've moved, oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, 

[00:34:27] Margaret Coker: Patty, let me interrupt you really quickly because trying to get comfortable with yourself and trying to get comfortable with asking for help, this can be a lifelong process that is. Very difficult, at least in in the American context because we are brought up and raised with these amazingly inspiring stereotypes of the single individual who overcomes all odds and becomes an Olympic gold medalist.

Or they have a weight boxer of the world or just performs at whatever they're doing because individual heroism is prized, enshrined and encapsulated more often than not. And so really strong. Teams and figuring out teamwork in order to help you become a better person, a better individual, better professional, but also a stronger member of a community is something that isn't prioritized enough.

And in my business, in in the journalism world, you think of any movie you've seen about journalism, it is about one lone wolf who's going out to fight the big bad corporation or the big bad whomever, and exposes wrongdoing on their own. Guess what? That is not sustainable. You might get one of those highs and you might get a big prize once in your life, but if you do not know how to work well with others and you don't have a team that's supporting you and mutually reinforcing what you're trying to accomplish, you're gonna burn out.

You're gonna become an alcoholic. You're going to be an absolute shell of a person. 

[00:35:53] Paddy Steinfort: Love. Love the fact that you raised that. 'cause when I was saying full circle, this is where you've ended up in your journalism career, right. Done amazing things. You've scaled the heights of the journalistic world as well as adventure, and now you're back home in safety in Savannah, Georgia.

But it's not just 'cause you wanted to retreat and retire. You're actually back there running your own independent. Journalist agency. I think I've used the right words there. But also part of it is to mentor the new generation of journalists. Right. And part of that I imagine is passing on some of this wisdom, right?

At what point did you gather that wisdom yourself? Because a lot of people, a lot of us get into this high performance world. It's because I want, I wanna be that guy or that girl, right? And then you start to realize, oh shit, this is really hard if I'm just gonna do it by myself. Is part of you going back now trying to give that wisdom to the younger generation about yo, don't try and do it by yourself.

Certainly. But at the same time, we also go back to earlier in, in our hour, I was homesick for the time that I was abroad. I was homesick. I never wanted to be the permanent American expat. I always, I wanted to get back home and again, I had enormously successful and fruitful career. And if journalism at its best as a public service, America needs me now more than ever.

So I came back home in 2019. I left my large newsroom jobs. I had a book deal and I came back home to finish writing my book. I we're sitting here in the very charming, beautiful Savannah, Georgia, and we live in a part of our state that is considered a news vacuum. There are whole towns. Counties a hundred miles around us that have no local news outlet anymore.

The business model of traditional newspapers just went into the toilet about 10 years ago, and what we have seen in the meantime is the rise of the outrage machine. So you have nationally syndicated programs who have talking heads, who pontificate all the time, and important local news is no longer being covered.

And there's no journalist left to, to cover those pieces of news. So when I came home, wrote my book, I decided I was gonna do something about that. And part of that was getting, again, a good team around me of successful, experienced local journalists and we're running our own shop. It's community. Very cool.

Yeah, it's a nonprofit, so we're not chasing clicks and we're not chasing ads, and we really have a chance to see. Serve the community in a way that you don't need to when businesses who want to advertise with you are looking for a certain targeted demographic. So yeah, it's been a really important and really exciting pivot in life.

[00:38:32] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, I'm really glad to hear that description there, because having lived in America since the middle part of Obama's second term, so I was there for about eight years, or have been a resident for about eight years. The, one of the things that has stood out to me as it's gotten worse, obviously over the last few years, is the outrage machine, as you described there, and the shift, and I playfully wrestle with my brother on text messages and calls occasionally about like where media is going versus where we would like journalism to be.

And the outrage machine is a definite threat to journalism, to the real job of journalists and to the ability of journalists. And this outrage machine is a threat to the ability of journalists to do their jobs, but also even just to journalists own mental health and wellbeing. Because the outrage machine exists on Twitter, the trolls, the comments, the vitriol, like even just the response to a normal story of the words, disgusted.

Disgraceful, like. Are not disgusting. You're not about to vomit. Having read the story, like you're not overblown the word, how do you see that impacting, even just you coming back and experiencing it? What's the experience of dealing with trolls like, is that. Something that's tough to deal with as a journalist these days.

[00:39:46] Margaret Coker: Yes, yes and yes is, I remember my first newsroom in the world where we still all ran on faxes. There was always a daily crank, right? Someone who would be so obsessed or pent up emotions that were streaming out of a handwritten letter that he had needed to send on a fax machine. So all of us. Could spend our, our after hours drinking a beer and laughing about the outrageous things that this outraged person on the far left or right decided to send us.

And yes, of course social media just cranks that up by, by a hundred thousand times. It is a profession not for the same hearted if you're actually trying to do insightful in-depth journalism. I think you also, probably because of the pace of the work, it doesn't happen in 30 seconds or 30 minutes.

Sometimes, it takes 30 days or three months. And so the pace of your life and your mission slows you down as a journalist. And I think it also gives you the luxury to ignore some of that outrage around you. And hopefully you have, because of the fact that you are digging in deep, that you're looking at data that you are cultivating.

Sources who know what they're talking about instead of just talking about something. It gives you a perspective on the cranks and the trolls. If you. Live though, if your identity is caught up in being a big city journalist with a enormous amount of Twitter followers and a cachet as one of those TV talking heads, I think you lose sight of what's actually important.

It really isn't important to be liked by strangers. What's really important is that your work has impact, and I can say quite definitively that's the kind of work that we're doing here. 

[00:41:34] Paddy Steinfort: Very cool. And you me, you mentioned the word hopefully there. Oh, firstly, I wanna highlight that. It isn't important to be liked by strangers.

I love that quote. That should be on Instagram. The last thing I wanna ask and how the show up is, it's been fascinating to to be dragged through your world for a little bit. Given everything you've been through, and particularly the latest branch of your work in this not-for-profit, trying to bring real journalism back into the center of it, what do you hope your work leads to, either when it's when you're sitting doing an investigative piece or you're in a trouble spot that you're trying to.

The story of a normal person or expose something that should be exposed. But even in your work as a mentor to other journalists, what's the hope for you in doing that work? 

[00:42:16] Margaret Coker: Yeah, I'm gonna give you an answer and I'm going to challenge you and your listeners to go to our website and see how real my answer is.

So listeners, my news organization in coastal Georgia we're called the Current, like the C Current, and you can find us at thecurrentga.org. The GA is for Georgia. What we're trying to do is put together, curate, and write our own in-depth coverage of our communities. And you're going to come to our website and not see things you've ever seen before in large part because you might not have ever been to Savannah or Brunswick or Liberty County.

And these places are unique and beautiful. They of stubbornly high poverty rates and extraordinary rich people all living cheek by gel. Because we're not in a major metropolitan area, we are forgotten. But the people who live here are real people with real problems and real hopes and dreams. And so when you read what we're doing at the current, you're going to see things that impact people across the state of Georgia.

For example, last year we ran a data driven, the first ever data-driven investigation into the state's school choice program, which is a, it's a way that tax. Payers can help fund private schools across the state. It was passed in order to help low-income kids who are stuck in failing schools have better education choices and outcomes.

Nobody had ever looked to see if the promises were being fulfilled, and we did. And so we found out some very basic things like over a 10 year period, we can't even tell how many. Scholarships were given via this pot of money that reached $600 million. We have no idea. No one's ever audited. Some of the operators who are handling this money and giving out the money.

Some of those people are fraudsters or actually convicted fraudsters. So no one was shepherding this money. No one was actually helping low-income kids. Our stories around last year, the outrage was real. And I think this is where outrage matters, and it led to pressure to get the state law amended so that people who were it was supposed to help are actually going to be helped.

Now, we live in the shadow of the town where Ahmed Arbery was killed. Nobody's actually looking at the way in which that police force has failed people for an entire generation. And we are, CNN will come down and cover the trial NBC. The big global networks will come and cover the trial, but no one's actually going to look.

In depth and see how many other people have been victimized by this force. So that's the kind of impact that we are gonna have on our community, and that's what I want people when they read it to say, Ah-huh, I've learned something new. And also, I'm now empowered with some information that'll help me improve my own life.

[00:44:58] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, I, I hear you describe those two examples, which are great ones, and I, I do encourage people to get to the website and we'll talk about Twitter following in a second in terms of people who can follow you along in particular. But the three words that have come up commonly through common themes here are clearly, we started with curiosity, then there was the courage to be able to sit in that curiosity.

But at the core of it all is care. You're caring for the people who, who need help. Who potentially caring for issues that need to be exposed and for that, so you should be applauded. So thank you for your work. Thank you for sharing your story with the rest of the group. For those who do wanna find you and follow your amazing work of.

Curiosity, courage and care. How do they find you on Twitter? 

[00:45:41] Margaret Coker: Yeah, I'm mideasmargaret. That goes back to my former life. And also the book that you mentioned that that is out now is called The Spy Master of Baghdad that does not have its own Twitter following, but Midea Margaret, you can find more about my book and about my life here in Savannah.

[00:45:59] Paddy Steinfort: Fantastic. Margaret Coker, really appreciate you sharing your amazing journey with us, and just another leg coming up of that trip around the world and through me, famous and not so famous places, you're having a huge impact. Thanks for sharing your story and look forward to following the current GA as it continues to grow.

[00:46:16] Margaret Coker: Thanks for the conversation.