How ‘Spotlight’ gets journalism right

by David Kavanagh

At one point about a third of the way through Tom McCarthy’s Oscar-winning Spotlight, Boston Globe reporter Sasha Pfieffer, portrayed in the film by the ever-brilliant Rachel McAdams, meets with a source at a busy cafe for an interview.

Upon seeing Sasha enter, the man stands abruptly to greet her, awkwardly knocking the table as he does so.

His name is Joe Crowley and he is one of hundreds throughout Boston molested by paedophile priests at an early age, a victim whose story Sasha and her fellow investigative journalists set out to tell throughout the course of the movie.

“I had a muffin while I was waiting,” Joe tells Sasha, fidgety, obviously anxious, but doing his best to remain stoic, “two, actually, I eat when I’m nervous.”

“I do that too, actually,” Sasha replies sympathetically.

‘Spotlight’ tells the true story of a group of Boston Globe reporters responsible for exposing the Catholic Church’s mass child molestation scandal.

While there are others of equally-respectable quality throughout Spotlight, this one scene stands out to me for the way it so accurately depicts the everyday experiences and minute details journalists working in the field become accustomed too.

Early on, as a fresh-faced, knowledge-hungry student at journalism school, I was taught a number of basic techniques for interviewing people in the most efficient manner possible.

The goal is always to get as much useful information out of a source as possible, attaining new leads or perspectives on a story, and doing so ethically, in a way that won’t harm the source emotionally if it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Recognising that many people freeze up when having to talk to reporters, especially when a camera is present or the subject matter is sensitive or uncomfortable, my tutors would often remind me to first try to put my interviewee at ease.

“Ask them what they had for breakfast,” they would say.

“Say something relatable, show them they can trust you and that you care about what they have to tell you.”

With this in mind, Sasha’s quip about her own tendency to eat when she’s nervous is much more than a throwaway.

It is a marker of empathy specifically designed to get Joe to open up. It is an indication that Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy, the film’s writers, did their research. And it is one of those little and easily overlooked realistic details that make me giddy.

“He molested me,” a more at ease Joe goes on to tell Sasha some way into the interview, having been asked what exactly had happened all those years ago.

She pauses. It’s not enough.

Actress Rachel McAdams with the real Sasha Pfieffer. Source: Kerry Hayes

“I think that language is going to be so important here,” Sasha says, briefly refraining from her note-taking, “we can’t sanitise this, people have to know what actually happened.”

In so doing, she mirrors another valuable lesson for journalism students.

Language is everything. Strong quotes that provide a unique point-of-view, that humanise topics, add authority, or provide a level of emotion that a detached pundit can’t possibly provide, are the backbone of a good piece.

Joe, as a direct victim of the Catholic Church’s child abuse cover up, is the key to blowing the lid off the story and getting the average reader to care.

His elaboration, detailing the sex acts he was made to perform, encourage disgust and with it attentiveness.

As cynical as it might sound, graphic details and emotion are near necessary, not just to sell papers but to make people genuinely care. It is why news stories with more violent or shocking content often get a lot more hits than others.

This scene in the cafe, alongside the rest of the film, is as accurate and informative as it gets, highlighting the techniques, stresses and frustrations of work in the field, as well as the brief moments of euphoric electricity that strike when a vital piece of a story falls into place.

Perhaps apt for a film about a profession dealing in truth, its strength lies in its details. It deserves the praise it’s getting and then some.

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Double-edged sword: how reporting terrorist violence can aid those that commit it

by David Kavanagh

Coming into 2016, journalists and news organisations working in Pakistan find themselves at the centre of an interesting but increasingly dangerous situation.

The Pakistani government has supplied them with a list of 72 outlawed terrorist groups and officially banned reporting on terrorist attacks perpetrated by these groups.

This comes as another measure enforced as part of Pakistan’s ever-escalating struggle against terrorism, which kickstarted when extremists murdered 141 people, including 132 children, at a school in Peshawar in December 2014.

Designed to prevent fear-mongering and the glorification of terrorism within the country, the media ban has resulted in Taliban and other militants targeting journalists over what they perceive to be unfair and imbalanced reporting.

Journalists in Pakistan protest the assassination of colleague Zaman Mehsud by a Taliban gunman, November 2015. Source: Ashraf Ali/ ABC news

While an extreme example, the difficult position the media in Pakistan is currently trapped in – between government regulation and focussed acts of violence – mirrors a larger ethical debate that often comes up in the news media industry: does reporting on the actions of terrorist groups help them get what they want?

Before this question can be answered, it is important to look more closely at what terrorism actually is and what groups employing terrorism tactics hope to achieve.

What is terrorism? What do “terrorists” want?
The academic literature on terrorism and counter-terrorism that vaulted up in popularity post-9/11 is multifaceted and hotly debates varying definitions of terrorism.

Some even suggest that there is no such thing as an inherent terrorist group, and rather only groups that can use particular strategies typically regarded as terrorism.

A revolutionary group staging a coup may, for example, make use of terrorist tactics such as car bombings or assassination, and still not be regarded as a terrorist group because they don’t do it all the time.

To keep it simple, however, prominent scholar Timothy Shanahan describes terrorism as the “strategically indiscriminate harming or threat of harming members of a target group in order to influence the beliefs and/ or emotions of an audience group in ways judged to be conducive to the advancement of some political, religious… [or other] agenda.”

Under this definitional umbrella, there are three primary characteristics of terrorist violence:

1. It is politically motivated
2. It acts as a form of symbolic communication
3. It instrumentalizes its victims

In other words, terrorist acts make use of its victims to send a symbolic and politically motivated message to a target audience. It is not expressly designed just to kill or maim the victims it immediately reaches, but rather to communicate to a larger group.

US journalist Steven Sotloff was beheaded by IS militants on September 2, 2014. Pictured here in Bahrain in 2010. Source: BBC news

The Islamic State beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff (among others) in 2014, and the devastating attacks in Paris in November last year, were carried out in protest of US and French involvement – primarily in the form of airstrike campaigns – in the ongoing war in Iraq and Syria.

On another level, IS carries out these sorts of violent attacks against the West because the West both symbolically and physically opposes the doctrines of extreme Sharia law it espouses; by their understanding, the two entities cannot co-exist.

Violence, especially when it is heavily reported on, is the best way to make this known.

The news media is a “double-edged sword”
Ubiquitous and ever-growing mass news and social media gives journalists and civilians alike the ability to reach and communicate with billions of people in a matter of seconds.

Before the advent of traditional technologies such as TV and radio, let alone the game-changing entity that is Web 2.0., news and updates about important events in the world were spread by telegraph, paper, or word of mouth.

Today, many studies show that although it might seem like the world is becoming an increasingly violent place – with horrible news emerging daily from at home and from far-off war torn nations like Iraq and Libya – in actuality, it’s becoming more peaceful.

The real difference is that media technologies have made it much easier for us to access and disseminate information than before.

While once a violent group might have had to wait days or weeks for news of their actions and associated political messages to spread, now we can know about them even as they are happening.

Thousands tweeted live updates, for example, as the IS-affiliated gunmen began wreaking havoc throughout the streets of Paris; it was a digital storm the media picked up in mere moments.

In this context, the media acts as a sort-of “double-edged sword”.

Jund Al-Aqsa, a splinter group of the Syrian Al-Nusra Front, lists its official Twitter accounts. Social media is near as much a tool for extremist groups as it is for everyone else. Source: Twitter

Where on one hand, reporting on terrorism ensures news practitioners stay true to their commitment to informing the public about the what, where, how, why, and who relating to ongoing events and issues that could potentially affect their everyday life, on the other hand, they’re playing straight into the hands of “the enemy”.

Without the news media to spread their message, the impact of terrorist violence – spreading fear and division and encouraging sympathisers to join the cause – falters.

It begs the tired cliche: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?  Would terrorist groups continue to commit acts of violence if no-one was going to hear about it?

In the modern arena, the answer to that question may not even matter. With social media constantly brimming with billions of opinions and shares, news now spreads whether the mainstream journalists are involved or not.

That said, established news organisation exist with a level of authority the average joe doesn’t command. If the BBC reports an attack, you can ultimately trust that an attack has happened.

News framing: how the media talks about terrorism matters
Journalists in Pakistan are faced with two absolute options: either they abide by government censorship and stop reporting on terrorism attacks in an effort to shake the hold the Taliban and other groups have on the hearts and minds of the public, or they don’t, and rather continue fulfilling their journalistic duty to tell the truth.

Outside of this severe situation, the answers about what to do when it comes to reporting on terrorism aren’t (thankfully) as black and white.

In the world of professional and ideally ethical journalism, you must consider deeply every word you write or say.

How a journalist writes or says something can determine whether their report will have a positive or negative social outcome.

Irresponsible reporting can have dangerous consequences. Source: CNN

This concept of a journalist making decisions in portraying an event – through the language, narrative and images they consciously decide to include (or exclude) in a story – is called news framing.

While more commercial outlets might be tempted to include emotive or exaggerated language in an attempt to win ratings and bring in the revenue, describing an Islamic terrorist as an “evil Muslim” or IS as an “apocalyptic death cult“, for example, ethical reportage should encourage neutral language.

Emotional fear-mongering, after all, is very much what a terrorist organisation would want. IS does what it does because it wants its targets to be afraid.

If the West engages with IS militarily, it is likely because IS coaxed them into it.

Furthermore, language that unnecessarily associates a particular group, such as moderate Muslims, with a particular warped ideology or stereotype, is also greatly discouraged.

Rampant Islamophobia in the post-9/11 world is also something groups like IS encourage. If it can cause its enemies to split internally and fight amongst themselves, half the battle is already won.

As should be becoming evident by now, at the heart of responsible reportage about terrorism should lie fine ethics and consideration about the way the world is framed.

The media is a double-edged sword, but it is up to rational journalists and healthily critical audiences to decide which side to sharpen.

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Threat overblown: there’s too much talk of terrorism in the media

by David Kavanagh

More so than before the tragic events of September 11, 2001, media reporting around the world has become unnervingly inundated with stories concerning terrorism and the groups that perpetrate terrorist violence.

In fact, the amount of media coverage given to terrorist activities on a daily basis far outweighs that given to other arguably pressing issues such as climate change and extreme poverty.

In the US specifically, terrorism has taken over cable news, with CNN reportedly mentioning “terrorism” and “ISIS” a combined 831 times between November 21 and December 21 in 2015.

By comparison, in that same period, CNN discussed “climate change” 135 times, “poverty” a mere 34 times, and “CISA”, a contentious piece of anti-privacy legislation of import at the time not at all.

The danger posed by ISIS has been blown far out of proportion by the world media. Source: CNN

In an interview with NPR, US President Barack Obama accused notorious (and also over-reported on) billionaire businessman turned Republican candidate Donald Trump of exploiting blue-collar fears and concerns about Islamic State, and said that the media wasn’t helping either.

“If you’ve been watching television for the last month, all you have been seeing, all you have been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you,” he said.

This is a continuing reality, not only in the US but around the globe, despite the fact that terrorism is not actually as much of a threat as the media leads the public to believe.

An ABC chart combining statistics from the Global Terrorism Database and the Gun Violence Archive shows that while terrorism has resulted in 3521 US deaths in the over forty-year period between 1970 and 2014 (including 9/11 – which accounts for 2996 of these), gun-related violence in America killed at least 9940 people in 2015 alone.

In a speech following a mass shooting in Oregon last October, President Obama said the attention given to terrorism over other issues is substantially skewed.

“We spend over $1 trillion and pass countless laws and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil — and rightfully so — and yet we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths,” he said.

Visibly upset, President Obama makes a speech following a shooting that killed 13 at a community college in Oregon. October 2015. Source: Kevin Lamarque/ Reuters

“How can that be?”

Furthermore, most of the deaths that do occur as a result of terrorism around the world occur in non-OECD or third world countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria.

According to a 2015 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, since 2000, less than 3% of terrorism-related deaths occurred in Western countries.

Even so, anti-Islamic sentiments – taking the form of threats and violence against Muslims all around the world – and fear about the possibility of Islamic State terror attacks in the West dominate public debate.

Globally, these fears have in turn led to the adoption of different pieces of legislation that although intended to protect the interests of National Security, are seen by some as threats to civil rights and freedoms.

We are forced to wonder whether it really is necessary for the mass media to report on terrorism as much as it does.

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Crimes against journalists on the rise: RSF calls for UN action

by David Kavanagh

Reporters without Borders (RSF), the international association that advocates for press freedom and protection, recently launched a call for the UN to step up its game safeguarding journalists and media workers around the world.

The not-for-profit argued for the creation of a new position called the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for the Safety of Journalists which could be used to monitor UN member states and ensure their compliance regarding press safety under international law.

This comes in the wake of a steady and disturbing increase in the amount of crimes and illegal actions taken against journalists in a litany of countries around the world and a general decrease in freedom of information.

Photographer Chris Hondros was one of 103 journalists killed in 2011. Source: AFP.

Marking November 2^nd as the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, UNESCO noted that in the past decade around 700 journalists have been killed while or for reporting the news.

This averages out to about one person killed per week since 2005/ 2006.

Furthermore and equally upsetting, in about nine out of ten cases, those responsible for these murders have gone largely unpunished.

In an August 2015 report, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, recalled the recent heavily publicised beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Kenji Goto in Syria, as well as the eight Charlie Hebdo journalists that were murdered in their offices in Paris in January.

“I am deeply concerned about the failure to reduce the frequency and the scale of targeted violence that journalists face and the near absolute impunity for such crimes,” he wrote.

While these particular cases are widely known, a majority of journalists killed are rarely mentioned in the international press.

In the past decade, while 6% of journalists killed were foreign correspondents like Foley and Sotloff, 94% were locals operating in their country of origin.

These harrowing realities exist in tandem with a general deterioration of freedom of information around the world.

According to the 2015 World Press Freedom Index, about two-thirds of the 180 nation states monitored across all continents performed worse this year than in 2014.

The formation of this new position at the UN will hopefully be the first of many steps towards greater protection of the safety of journalists and media workers and, by extension, press freedom.

For more information about issues affecting journalists, visit the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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Journalism is not dying: the true impact of the Fifth Estate

by David Kavanagh

The cynics are wrong. Traditional journalism is not on its deathbed and citizen journalists are not malignant, job-consuming parasites like many in the profession seem to believe. In fact, they may actually help foster a bright future for the journalism industry.

That said, I’m not denying that it has been a tough few years for the media. The news juggernauts of days past have had to face a seemingly endless litany of hardships and forced transformations.

It is true, for example, that a vast number of people are disenchanted with and distrust the media today. According to a 2012 poll conducted by the Australian National University, 44% of those surveyed regarded the media as “corrupt” in some way. Numerous other polls suggest this apathy extends to media practitioners as well.

It is also true that the technological disruption and new media platforms that emerged in the early days of this century caught a lot of news companies off-guard, resulting in costly structural revisions and many media workers losing their jobs.

These changes pushed many respectable news outlets into an industry-wide pit of unproductive pessimism and painful nostalgia. It is all too easy to cling onto the way things used to be and, in so doing, overlook the monumental positive developments that have accompanied the rise of new media and the so-called ‘Fifth Estate’.

Because really, it is not all that bad.

The speedy and kinetic nature of this new digital information age extends far beyond simple technological advancement. Like Web 2.0. and the smartphones most of us now use to organise our day-to-day affairs, the media industry, as well as the practice of news gathering as a whole, is not dying; it is evolving for the better.

Look at Ferguson, Missouri.

On August 9, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer in this working class St. Louis suburb. Mere hours after his death, hundreds of outraged members of the community converged to the site of the shooting, citing racial discrimination and unjust police brutality as the cause of their discontentment.

It was the beginning of a dramatic period of social unrest, vandalism, and austere police-enforced repression that has shocked and galvanised people into protest all around the world.

Riot police stand guard in Ferguson, Missouri. Aug 13 2014.
Source: Mario Anzuoni

Thanks to the combined efforts of professional news teams and citizens contributing content on ubiquitous social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, audiences have been able to follow every little detail and development of this suburban conflict since its outbreak.

But to really appreciate the extent to which citizen media has enabled more quality reporting, it is vital to consider the strengths and weaknesses of both traditional and citizen journalism.

According to journalists and media theorists, Tom Rosentiel and Bill Kovach, the primary role of journalists can be divided into at least four parts: to bear witness, to authenticate or verify information, to make sense of events and turn “information into knowledge”, and to fulfill the “watchdog” function through investigative reportage.

In many ways, citizen journalists can accomplish the first of these with even greater efficiency than professional journalists.

While reporters can use company funds to travel to conflict zones or the scenes of newsworthy events in order to offer authentic insight into what is going on, they cannot be everywhere all at once. Citizen journalists, on the other hand, as part of a collective group numbering into the billions, can. Equip anyone with a camera phone and access to the Internet and they become a valuable vantage point on unfolding stories.

Some of the most striking images out of Ferguson, such as those depicting embittered youths shielding themselves from clouds of tear gas and police officers, wielding military grade weaponry and vehicles, firing rubber bullets into staunch crowds, were captured by protesters and observers on the ground.

In fact, at certain points during the clashes, journalists and television crews from outlets like CNN were either threatened by angry demonstrators or arrested and barred from filming by the police. The task of documenting the ongoing carnage fell literally into the hands of citizens whose smartphones were far less conspicuous than the wieldy cameras and microphones used by reporters.

In a similar vein, iconic images from events like the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and the snapshots of destruction that continue to emerge from places like Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Gaza on a daily basis, can only be captured by the people on the ground at the time that events occur.

A man films the aftermath of a police-led teargas attack in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Nov 23 2011.
Source: Peter Macdiarmid/ Getty Images

Consider that we would not have footage of Kennedy’s assassination had Abraham Zapruder, armed with a simple 8mm Benn and Howell camera, not been filming the president’s cavalcade as it made its way through Dealey Plaza.

Even so, the ‘Protectionists’ remain adamant that a citizen should and could not be called a journalist simply due to happenstance. This position is understandable since traditional journalism is about much more than just being in the right place at the right time.

Debates on terminology aside, citizen journalists are also far less reliable sources of information than professionals. Unlike media workers specifically trained in newsgathering practices and media law and ethics, citizens are prone to inaccuracy and deliberate or accidental uncritical bias. Many online blogs run by amateur journalists, for instance, tend to combine reportage of events with their own one-sided activist agendas.

This is where the established news folk retain their significance.

While citizen journalists may be good at bearing witness and offering raw and immersive accounts of stories as they transpire, they cannot perform the roles of authenticators, sense makers and watchdogs in the same way that the trained professionals of the ‘Fourth Estate’ can.

While a popular argument is that no journalist is completely void of bias, they are specifically educated in ethics and therefore more capable at ensuring that they do not allow their subjectivity to interfere with their reporting. Furthermore, they are able to distinguish between the sources that are reliable and those that are sketchy at best.

This skill extends further to their sense-making function. The content constantly being manufactured by citizens contributes to what some commentators refer to as an “information overload”. The sheer quantity of blog posts, tweets, videos, and Facebook statuses uploaded each day make it ever more difficult to separate trivial information from important facts.

But journalists know what to look for and are tasked with putting extensive amounts of information into context, allowing them to then compress the facts into news that is digestible by the wider public.

Practically, professional journalists are also granted access to places and sources that are unavailable to the ordinary citizen. Politicians and other significant figures in the public sphere, in the interest of much-demanded transparency, see it as part of their obligation to grant journalists interviews.

For these reasons, established reporters will remain many steps above the average blogger or social media user. They need not fear displacement.

However, as evidenced in Ferguson and many events like it, collaboration between the professionals and the amateurs has created a public intelligence that is both broader and richer than anything that has come before. This should be embraced.

The industry’s future, although strange and unpredictable, looks promising.

Are you optimistic about the future of the journalism industry? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Why journalists die for the news

by David Kavanagh

Political implications and global indignation aside, James Foley’s death sheds a light on a harrowing truth about investigative and frontline journalism: sometimes the pursuit of news can have sizable human costs.

According to data collected by the Committee to Protect Journalists since 1992, Foley is one of at least 1072 media workers that have lost their lives while fighting to grant important stories their time in international limelight.

Hundreds of others, like Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste or Steven Sotloff, one of the other journalists currently being held by the Islamic State, have paid similarly hefty prices, sacrificing their personal liberty, comfort, or right to live in particular countries.

In the face of these distressing statistics, the question arises: what is it that drives these men and women to put their own safety on the line for the sake of a story?

The answer is multifaceted.

You’ve got to note that while Jim’s murder and Peter’s undue imprisonment in Cairo have both garnered immense international attention, there are dozens of journalists that perish in the ‘line of duty’ every year who we never hear about.

Just last month in fact, on July 30th, two Palestinian journalists, one, Sameh Al-Aryan, a cameraman for Al Aqsa TV, the other, Rami Rayan, a photographer for the Palestine Network for Press and Media, visited a market in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza to photograph and document the aftermath of a recent Israeli air strike and were killed, alongside at least 16 other people, when a second bombardment rained down on the street.

Rami Rayan’s body is moved following an airstrike in Shijaiyah market, Gaza.
Source: Mahmud Hams/ AFP/ Getty Images

An overwhelming 87% of those 1072 media practitioners killed so far were local journalists, drivers, and translators and yet their sacrifices are rarely directly recognised by mainstream Western media.

The fact of the matter is, when the violence becomes too intense and well-funded international outlets pull their people out, it becomes the duty of the local practitioners, ballsy freelancers, and citizen reporters to continue to document the going-ons.

In part, then, some journalists put their lives on the line simply because they just can’t escape. Money is tight, travel is dangerous, and for many, the houses and neighbourhoods being reduced to dust are the houses and neighbourhoods in which they grew up.

That’s not the only reason though. At the heart of it, what I believe drives many of the courageous few, locals and foreigners alike, is an unwavering dedication to their journalistic duty.

One of the reasons extremist groups like the Islamic State publicise brutal actions like James Foley’s execution is because they want to scare away the foreign media (and they’re often successful). The reporters who stay actively undermine these efforts by preventing complete media blackouts and keeping issues of import on the global public agenda. That takes guts.

American journalist James Foley
Source: Manu Brabo/ Eyepress/ Rex

During a 2011 video interview with the Global Post about the experiences he had covering the conflict in Libya, James Foley answered:

Frontline journalism is important. Without these photos and videos and first-hand experiences we can’t really tell the world how bad it might be.

Jim had witnessed the death of fellow photojournalist, Anton Hammerl, and spent 44 days imprisoned by pro-Qaddafi forces before returning home. Despite his ordeals, he returned to the Middle East, this time Syria, in 2012, and was kidnapped by Islamic State militants on November 22 en route to the Turkish Border. We all know what happened 2 years later.

Mirroring his sentiments are the words of Marie Colvin, an American journalist who was killed by an IED during the Siege of Homs exactly 9 months before Jim’s abduction.

Having continued to cover the conflicts unfolding in places such as Kosovo, Egypt, Syria, Sierra Leone, Chechnya, Zimbabwe, East Timor, and Sri Lanka, despite losing an eye to shrapnel in the latter, she was, like Foley, intrepid, committed, and too brave for her own good.

In a harrowing speech commemorating the lives of fallen journalists at St Bride’s church in London in 2010, she said:

Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction and death, and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash. And yes, it means taking risks, not just for yourself but often for the people who work closely with you…The public have a right to know what our government, and our armed forces, are doing in our name. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.

Marie Colvin while covering the uprising in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Feb 2011.
Source: Ivor Prickett/ The Sunday Times

These journalists believed in this: A journalist’s first obligation is to the truth.

The truth is an invaluable and powerful weapon that  beckons the attention of those that can help and arms the voiceless against oppression, injustice, corruption, or whatever ills plague or impede them. For that reason, it’s seemingly worth the risk.

However, both James Foley and Marie Colvin had some sound words of advice for others pursuing work in war zones. While Marie implored reporters to make a distinction between “bravery and bravado”, Jim, addressing students at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Illinois in June 2011 said:

You have a close call. You need to really look at that. That’s pure luck that you didn’t get killed there. Pure luck. You need to either change your behaviour right there, or you shouldn’t be doing this, because it’s not worth your life. It’s not worth your mother and your father, your brother and your sister bawling.

While the sacrifices made by too many local and international reporters are heartbreaking, their commitment to the democratisation of information and unfaltering belief in the transformative and progressive powers of truth and the news is incredibly inspiring.

They are real heroes.

For more information on all of the journalists mentioned in this piece, simply click on their names. They are definitely worth reading about. 

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