The New York Times journalists–photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario among them–recount their ordeal after being captured in Libya:
“Shoot them,” a tall soldier said calmly in Arabic.
A colleague next to him shook his head. “You can’t,” he insisted. “They’re Americans.”
They bound our hands and legs instead — with wire, fabric or cable. Lynsey was carried to a Toyota pickup, where she was punched in the face. Steve and Tyler were hit, and Anthony was headbutted.
Cameras are now seen as weapons and the dangers of photographing conflict seems to be on the rise.
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.
Read the rest of today’s A1 story (here).
3 Comments
This is some scary stuff, glad these people made it out alive, feel sorry for their driver who is probably pushing up daisies. Photo-J has always been dicey personal safety-wise, but it has gotten way worse in the last decade. As a kid, I thought the 21st century would be less barbaric than the 20th but that was naive.
I’m torn, I bow my hat to the individuals that take the risk to bring stories and images to the public, that we otherwise wouldn’t see. But on the flip side, you can’t just expect to not run into trouble just cause you’re American.
If you stick your hand in the hornets nest you’re going to get stung.
What I would’ve liked to know is what this experience means for their future work as (photo)journalists. The logical consequence of the realization that no article is worth dying for seems to be to stop working as a war journalist.
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