Risking their lives to tell the story

Opinion

June 25, 2019 - 10:43 AM

Last week started with our colleague and friend, Tom Fox, suddenly finding himself in the midst of a violent assault on the judiciary. Rather than flee, he took up his camera and shot the suspect with something other than bullets. As he has done tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of times, before he lifted his camera. And in its eye, Fox captured the suspect in the thrall of his attack.

This is first stunning — who has the courage, the habit, the skill and the quickness of mind in such a moment other than a professional deeply dedicated to his craft? Second, the moment is also reflective of the larger public service that is reporting to a community what is happening and why — or, in the case of an opinion section like ours, what might be done about it to shape our common trajectory.

Reporters and photographers across the globe do this every day. Journalists don’t always get it right, and not every person purporting to be a journalist takes with them the approach of letting the facts shape the story. But there is an importance to having professionals out there, on the streets, in the rooms of power, telling the rest of us what is happening that is too often overlooked. Too often we forget that our public debate is what determines the success of our society, and too often we take for granted that even basic facts are widely known about what is happening.

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