Radio:How it effects soldiers.

Final projects
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=90Q2ui2DREg

Freelance War Journalism

David Axe who wrote War is Boring

     

      In War is Boring, David Axe is a war journalist, or war correspondent. Men and women risk their lives every day to report in the scariest places around the world. These men and women have it worse than we might think. The Atlantic describes this “Most media outlets can't afford full-time war correspondents, so they rely on freelancers who make less money and receive no benefits like expense accounts, security, or insurance.” So these men and women are reporting in deadly war zones without any compensation. I do not believe that the U.S. government should continue to allow this.

                In the novel, David Axe brings his girlfriend along with him to Somalia on business just as though anyone can go and report in these deadly countries. The Atlantic also explains this about freelancers by saying, “New technology also means that anyone with a plane ticket and a phone can be a freelancer.” Freelance war correspondents may be providing the U.S. and other countries with needed information; however, the men and women of these countries should get the information from writers that have a company backing them up. War correspondents like Marie Colvin die all the time because they are the enemy’s targets. Tom Goulding says this in The Independent, “As the targets of government shelling, many have speculated their deaths were a warning to the outside world; scare tactics designed to drive foreign journalists out of a war that has so far claimed the lives of over 60,000 people.” I do not think the U.S. government should be responsible for people that willingly travel to these conflict zones; however, I do not think the government should allow war correspondents or war journalists to go to deadliest, nastiest fighting zones with little to no compensation. 

                These men and women journalists are more likely to get killed because they are alone. Yes, they are putting their lives in danger either way, but there should be precautions taken. These journalist have no military training and probably do not have weapons. Tim Hetherington, who is best known for Restrepo, was killed on a freelance mission. J. Gallagher, a journalism student, states this in his blog, “Unquestionably the reason Tim Hetherington died was that nobody with him had the skills to save him.  If those with him knew how to stop the bleeding, he could have been saved.”  There are many dangerous jobs men and women do every day, but I believe that a U.S. journalist should not be at such a high risk.

    

Tim Hetherington

Marie Colvin