“Would he still be alive if I didn’t write about him?” is one of the heartbreaking questions Kevin Cullen, a Boston Globe columnist asked himself yesterday. “He” being Rakan, a young Iraqi boy who in 2006 was shot and paralyzed when American soldiers “panicked and opened fire on the family car” — a wrenching incident captured by Chris Hondros of Getty Images who was embedded with those soldiers — and whose recovery in Boston Cullen chronicled for the Globe and whose death from a bomb blast Cullen wrote about yesterday.
Cullen is just the latest journo/photog to ponder whether they influenced actions by practicing their professions.
While these questions are properly asked and discussed in the context of ethics peer review processes and participants, when placed in the context of corporate (employer-based) media stories designed to garner market share and ad revenue, they become self-serving and unethical.
It's the context.
Posted by Annie on Mon 4 Aug 2008 at 02:25 PM