Last Tuesday, four New York Times journalists were captured while on assignment covering the Gaddhafi uprisings in Ajdabiya, Libya. The four -- photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, reporter/videographer Stephen Farrell and Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid -- spent six days in captivity in the Northern African nation before they were officially driven to Tunisia and released Monday.
Turkey and its African ambassadors played a large role in the reporters' release, the Times announced in a Monday email release from the newspaper's executive editor, Bill Keller. So what does this stuff all mean?
Well, firstly, there are some incredibly interesting stories involved in this when you dig in deep. Secondly, it demonstrates just how much risk newspaper reporters take on in their jobs, often contrary to popular belief. And, thirdly and most importantly, this whole debacle created the biggest American connection to what's going on in Libya to date, and that's a positive development.
Let's start with No. 1: Farrell, a longtime Times reporter and one of the most respected war journalists in the business, has now been captured three different times on the job. This wasn't his first time at the rodeo. In September 2009, he was kidnapped by the Taliban in Northern Afghanistan and eventually rescued by a British army raid. He chronicled those events in a potent blog entry on the Times' website shortly after the incident. In April 2004, he was kidnapped during the First Battle of Fallujah in Iraq and released less than a day later.
Don't be surprised to see a similar account from Farrell in the coming days as the smoke clears from the incident and we find out more details.
About the risk -- obviously nobody thinks that war reporting is a risk-free job, but it's still not given anywhere close to the credit it deserves in terms of the inherent overall danger involved. One big reason it's particularly perilous is because of one key factor of war reporting that almost always holds true: the reporters are usually there illegally, unable to receive visas from the countries in which the wars are taking place. So if any foreign officials see reporters in these foreign countries -- and they typically stick out like sore thumbs -- they are liable to have them kidnapped and take them under captivity. And this is to say nothing of the involvement with the actual war, complete with guns, bombs and everything else you'd expect in combat. It's really, really risky stuff, and war reporters endure through it to provide necessary reports from the battlefields to the general public.
And, about Americans learning about the Libyan protests, it's really much-needed. The uprising began about a month before the reporters were kidnapped, yet, aside from the small newspaper-reading portion of society and certain others with particular connections to the African country, it went largely unnoticed. Then we Americans started to notice, started to pay attention, started to look East, when we first heard about the journalists being kidnapped.
That opened our collective eyes to many of the monstrosities occurring in Libya. The death toll, while unavailable in an official form, is at the very least in the thousands -- and crimes against humanity are much higher. Even now, with their government in shambles, Gaddafi still claiming to hold control and the U.S. getting involved to set up a no-fly zone, our collective knowledge of and familiarity with the story is far from what it needs to be. But at least we have some -- some, I stress -- grasp of it, especially as it continues to move forward and the stakes get raised.
That's often what we do when Americans are involved in something, and partly rightfully so. Now, that's an argument for a different day -- whether U.S. citizens are under-involved in foreign affairs as compared to residents of other countries -- but our involvement in this story is worthwhile.
Now, let's wait to see what Farrell and the rest of the Times reporters have to say about the whole ordeal.
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