Wednesday, March 23, 2011

When do Journalists Take it Too Far

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/world/africa/23times.html?hp

This Times article titles "4 Times Journalists Held Captive in Libya Faced Days of Brutality" was a joint account of the 4 who were arrested by government forces and spent days being shuttle around, threatened, bound, dodging gunfire and imagining their deaths. What struck me as interesting was that similar situations had occurred to three out of the four journalists - one had been arrested in Afghanistan, another shot in the back by a man he thought was an Israeli soldier. They seemed somewhat accustomed to the tribulations that a journalist covering a war zone might face.
They were seized at a checkpoint, and their driver went missing, and they comment "If he died, we will have to bear the burden for the rest of our lives that an innocent man died because of us, because of wrong choices that we made, for an article that was never worth dying for. No article is, but we were too blind to admit that."
To me, this was a truly profound admonition, mostly because it indicated that journalists sometimes think that a story is worth more than a life. In their valiant efforts to bring us the news and unleash the truth on the public, they might be compromising some other values. Are they really doing us and others a favor when they traipse around war zones? Or are they just looking for the most dramatic shot and story that will sell? It certainly sounds glamorous, but I'm not impressed by the possibility of journalists concluding that the story trumps all.

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