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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

South African Wildfire: An Allegory for Journalists (by Georgianne Nienaber)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geo...african-wildfire-an_b_124446.html

Excerpt:

While journalists, pundits and wordsmiths compose an epic battle of words in the inferno that has become known as election year politics, the rest of the world has had its share of disasters that barely register on stateside media radar. Three million are displaced in India due to flooding. International news reports describe desperate families swimming for their lives. In South Africa, wildfires are once again racing over the Lowveld regions of South Africa, consuming people, homes, land, and animals.

An African journalist's first-person account of a near death experience when he became trapped in a raging wildfire last week offers a metaphor for the journalistic process. Perhaps it is time for all writers to revisit the tenets of the fourth estate. Journalists have an important moral responsibility to find the path of integrity through moral minefields and that have opened old political wounds and ignited a firestorm of misunderstanding about small town America. The focus on tabloid style reporting which has infected some portions of the media has the potential to burn the fabric of civilized American society in the process.

The journalist in the following true story found himself forced to make impossible decisions in a life and death struggle that can certainly be considered an allegory for a journalist's duty to find the path to truth while reporting during this election year.

mke · Facilitator Joined: 25 Apr 2008 Posts: 27

It really isn't often that I read an article through tears. I think I've become accustomed to reading about cruelty and abuse and though it may make me feel ill, it no linger inspires tears. This did though. The beauty of the story amidst the the threat of death was truly heart wrenching. Your point about so much going on in the world while we sit and bicker about our little political shell game is well taken, but, I confess, forgotten, while reading this article.

Thank you for something special.