By SHAI FOX SAVARIAU
The bodies of two French journalists were returned to France on Tuesday. They had been kidnapped right after conducting an interview on Saturday in Mali.
Both reporters worked for Radio France International and they had been interviewing a Tuareg rebel near the town of Kidal.
Because of France’s decision to intervene in Mali, the French military secured the area around Kidal, which is why it was thought to be safe for the French journalists.
Both were shoved into a car by four men and were found dead soon after.
An Italian journalist was returned home safely recently after being abducted as well.
He is La Stampa’s war correspondent and entered Syria in April. He had been kidnapped for months before finally being released.
It has been reported that Syria is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. The government has expressed their opposition towards professional journalists, citizen and international alike.
According the Committee to Protect Journalists, 32 journalists have been killed and at least 12 abducted in Syria in the past 12 months.
These kinds of things happen all the time with journalists. War zones are an extremely dangerous place in general, but journalists are at times targets. This can be traced back throughout history and it only seems to get worse.
With this being said, why do journalists continue to go overseas to these overly dangerous areas?
It is simply this: the world deserves to know what is going on in these war zones and it is a journalist’s job to do so.
Personally, I don’t know how these reporters do it though. I don’t think I could ever have the courage to do so.
Being that I would like to become a photographer after college, I have been asked if I would be interested in doing war photography. The answer is no because of these tragedies that occur in these countries with internal conflict.
Journalists have to be strong people in order to report about things of this nature, but actually having to go to the place and live there for long amounts of time in order to get the story takes a large amount of bravery.
I look up to the photographers who go over to these zones of conflict and take pictures of what’s going on and I have nothing but respect for the ones who have lost their lives.