So after graduation I plan to hopefully land a news reporting job for a news station. The where and when is still up in the air for now. One thing I like about the news journalist market is that many jobs can leave to great travel overseas. I haven’t traveled much, so the idea of being a reporter stationed in a foreign country excites me. That is, it did until I found an article about 19 journalists being killed in the Syrian War since this past November.
Why would any person choose to willingly enter a warzone? I know they are many who join the military to help fight for their country and that is a very noble decision. Who would willingly put themselves in the middle of the action with only a microphone and a camera? When it comes down to it, news is news and is something that should be reported. The public has the right to know what is going on in Syria, but to what extent. Is something like that worth the lives of the very journalists covering the events? In my opinion it is not.
I can see the lure to take a job like that. Many organizations that are willing to fund a correspondent overseas are most likely a big company like CNN with very deep pockets. The exposure for that news reporter just starting out would be great for his or her career.
So when a job is offered to you to report in a war-torn country you need to carefully way out the options. Just like a soldier going off to war, you may not make it back. The risk needs to be weighed against the pros of the job. I personally don’t think I could ever accept a reporting job in a warzone, but obviously there are those who do take the job and report back to us from dangerous places like Syria.