In this episode 022 of Exposures, Scott Wallace speaks with Eros Hoagland about El Salvador, Central America, and the changing conditions of conflict reporting across the last four decades. The discussion moves through the practical and ethical conditions of reporting during the Salvadoran civil war: access to guerrilla forces and army commanders and the constant pressure of working in a country shaped by surveillance, death squads, intelligence operations, and contested territory. The conversation then broadens to the transformation of journalism itself, including the shift from analog to digital photography, the collapse of older media structures, the rise of the internet, and the new risks created when images from conflict zones can circulate instantly and endanger their subjects. It closes by connecting Wallace’s early Central America reporting to his current work on environmental issues, Indigenous struggles, rainforest protection, organized crime in the Amazon, and his teaching at the University of Connecticut in environmental journalism and global press freedom. To Experience “Covering El Salvador’s Civil War” DOWNLOAD TOTIM APP Scott Wallace Scott Wallace is an American journalist, writer, producer, educator, and photojournalist whose work has focused on armed conflict, international crime, Indigenous affairs, conservation, and the environment. He began his career in Central America in 1983, reporting from El Salvador as a freelance stringer for CBS News/CBS Radio and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution before expanding his work across Nicaragua and Guatemala for outlets including Newsweek, The Independent, and The Guardian. From 1983 to 1989, he covered the region’s U.S.-backed wars and counterinsurgencies, later serving as Central America correspondent for The Guardian. Wallace’s reporting, photography, and television work have since appeared across National Geographic, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s, The Nation, Newsweek, CNN, and the National Geographic Channel. He is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut and the author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes and Central America in the Crosshairs of War: On the Road from Vietnam to Iraq. Eros Hoagland Eros Hoagland is a Los Angeles–based visual storyteller, photojournalist, and cinematographer. Hoagland began his career documenting communities and countries shaped by cycles of violence, working for more than fifteen years across North and South America, the Middle East, and Asia. In 2014, he expanded into film and entertainment photography after being invited to work with acclaimed directors Michael Mann and Alejandro Iñárritu. His clients include The New York Times, Netflix, HBO, National Geographic, Apple TV, TIME, Legendary Pictures, The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, ESPN, Der Spiegel, the Los Angeles Times, and the American Red Cross. A California native, he spends his time outside of work surfing and diving in the Pacific Ocean. TOTIM is a new, nonprofit initiative built to support and amplify a global and diverse community of visual storytellers. We rely on your support to bring under-reported stories to light and sustain vital, independent documentary photography. Please consider a charitable, tax-deductible gift. Get full access to TOTIM at totim.substack.com/subscribe
