Kindle
Snip from a story written by Jill Carroll one year ago, for American Journalism Review. Carroll was abducted in Iraq on January 7, 2006, while working as a foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.
Link to full text.Only a story of this enormity, with nothing less than America's global credibility, the stability of the Middle East and countless lives at stake, could be worth risking personal safety and financial solvency to cover it as a freelancer. (...) Covering the war gives journalists an opportunity to recall the noblest tenets of their profession and fulfill the public service role of journalism.
The sense that I could do more good in the Middle East than in the U.S. drove me to move to Jordan six months before the war to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began. All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent, so when I was laid off from my reporting assistant job at the Wall Street Journal in August 2002, it seemed the right time to try to make it happen. There was bound to be plenty of parachute journalism once the war started, and I didn't want to be a part of that.
Idealistic, for sure, but I am not the only one.
Previously:
Carroll's blogger / journo pals continue to rally for her release