War Correspondents: Heroes or Vultures?
Are war correspondents the vultures they seem to be constantly portrayed as or are they just misunderstood heroes? War correspondents have placed their lives on the line to bring us news from the world's hotspots, from the ancient Peloponnesian War to the more recent Iraqi conflict, often with tragic consequences. These brave men and women work tirelessly to tell the stories of the people in the armed services and the battles they fight in. In the opinion of this product of Australia's education system, war correspondents aren't always the vulture that idiot box makes them out to be. They truly are heroes that don't deserve labels such as "vulture" or "scavenger".
The ordinary human being may not realise that these "scavengers" face danger every day while on their job. Even if it is peaceful, there is the chance of guerrilla attacks with rocket propelled grenades or car bombs such as the Australian cameraman that was killed in the early days of the Iraqi conflict. He has been the only Australian casualty to date in the conflict, not one member of the Australian armed forces has died. The journalists, cameramen and photographers of the world are constantly in the firing line as much as members of military forces are.
The military are always the first to enter a war zone and are usually the last to leave. They have hundreds of stories they could tell the uninformed world. That's why war correspondents exist, to tell the world who is fighting who, what they're fighting for, the resistance they've come across, the conditions they face and the atrocities committed by both warring parties. Most importantly, war correspondents are there to tell the world of the people that are being helped.
War may be pointless and a horrible waste of human life, but war correspondents are a vital and necessary part of it and often come across as being just as bad as war itself. As the public we need to know what is occurring in the war. Without war correspondents, we may never have heard the Iraqi Information Minister assure us that the Coalition were not even in Iraq has Allied tanks rolled the streets behind him or the horrific stories of suicide bombers in the Middle East. Although many people hold the belief that war correspondents are nothing more than scavengers, feasting off the carrion of war, by many people they are recognised as heroes and have become and integral part of war.
That's just my $0.02
Cheers