Pizzey’s Reflection: “For Journalists Who Cover Wars, Luck Is Like A Blind Trust Fund…”

By Brian 

CBSNews.com has posted reflections by Dan Rather and Allen Pizzey. Here’s an excerpt from Pizzey’s piece:

  Paul, James and Kimberly were not thrill seekers, ‘cowboys’ or war junkies. They were two good men and a good woman doing a job they liked, and which they believed served a higher purpose. None of us who cover wars are so vain as to think we can change the world. But we believe we can make a difference. If we do our jobs well, the excuse ‘we didn’t know’ cannot be used to justify inaction or indifference in the face or evil or suffering or injustice. You did know, because people like Paul and James and Kimberly and so many others who have died and been injured told you.

In most places, they would have known the danger was there, smelled it with a sixth, or maybe a seventh or eighth, sense that camera crews and correspondents who have survived in war zones develop.

But an IED (improvised explosive device) can be anywhere in Baghdad, and you cannot sense everything. And for journalists who cover wars, luck is like a blind trust fund; you can make withdrawals, but not deposits, and you have no idea how much is left.

Here’s the rest…

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