Dying to Tell the Story Essay

                                                    Dying to Tell the Story Essay

After seeing the video, my view of the function of journalism in the world has changed in various. I now know dome of the hardships that these photojournalists have to go through just to capture one picture. I never knew that journalists died while photographing wars. These photojournalists job is as important as someone fighting in a war. In a way journalists/photojournalists who work in conflict zones and report for news agencies are crazy for risking their lives but they do it for a very good cause. They perform an important service for us all. If they didn’t go out & do what they do we would mostly likely not know what’s going on in the rest of the world.

To be a reporter or a photojournalist I think you would have to have some very tough traits. You would probably have to learn how to hold your emotions back just to capture that moment, how to keep a straight face, and what is appropriate to photograph without invading someone’s privacy. Photojournalists and journalists are some of the bravest people besides the people who actually go out and fight in these wars. These people must have gone through very good training for their job because the take pictures of things that would make most people cry or throw up. For example, Margaret Bourke-White took pictures of the Holocaust after the Nazi’s left, although she did not die from her photographs. The holocaust is one of the most known wars and the things the Nazi’s did to the people at the camps were horrifying. There were massive gravesites that they left behind and just bodies laying on top of each other. If a person off the streets had come in those camps they would have had a reaction like no other. A photojournalist/journalist job may look easy but in reality there job sometimes-mean life or death.

In kindergarten I fell off the swing, broke my arm, and had to go to the hospital. I was scared that I might die or that my arm would have to be amputated. The feeling of breaking my arm is nothing compared to the feeling the photojournalists/journalists feel when they go into a war zone. I can imagine that they have butterflies in their stomach, or are scared of what might happen but I might not ever know what their real feeling is like. In a journalists mind they have to constantly wonder if they are going to make it another day in the war zone. “ There’s no way you could hide behind the camera because you’re looking through it . . . In a way you feel close to people your filming” said Don McCullen. Even though photojournalists fear for their lives thy mange to still to there job done.

In the year of 2010, there were 44 journalists killed while covering dangerous situations.  Thirty-one more deaths took place that may have been connected. Since the year 1992 there has 151 journalists killed in Iraq, 24 in Afghanistan, 51 in Pakistan, and 70 in Egypt. On the website I found this information on it really doesn’t say how these journalists died, but it does say that some of the motives of these crimes aren’t confirmed.