How can war correspondents and cameramen just stand by......? ?

Question

How can war correspondents and cameramen just stand by when terrible things are going on around them? I was just watching a clip of a old woman who had just been shot by the Russians and couldn't move even though a fire was burning her, and there's a camera man just standing there filming her as she's burning!!!! Or even that famous clip of the naked burning child in Viet Nam, how can someone just run in front of them and film/ take photographs when they're in excrutiating pain?

Answer 1

I think that when i'm watching things like Wife Swap, Supernanny not so important but when the kids are kicking the cr@p out of each other and no parent is in the room. The camera crew just stand by.

Answer 2

Camera crews normally do not get involved. Its important to get the story out and hence support the person[s] through the publicity. Its no accident that Mugabe in Zimbabwe has banned most western journalists from the country. He wants the persecution to go unrecorded otherwise he could end up in the Hague.

Answer 3

yes and how can doctors keep cool and collected while the patient is in agony and how can nurses do their job without running out of the building -- someones got to be professional-- not uncaring by the way--to bring the truth or deal with a situation beyond themselves.  

Answer 4

The media report was is happening and do not interfere for there own safety

Answer 5

It's because they are dependent on the people in charge of the area from which they film. Usually those are the same people committing the acts which you describe.

A previous answer says this reporting could save more lives. Possible but unlikely. More likely is that the perpetrators want to spread fear in the civilian population to make their job of subduing a local population easier.

It's called controlling and using the media. The media are also at fault for not reporting when their output is restricted by their 'hosts'.

Answer 6

as much as I couldn't do it, the job of a cameraman is to show what is happening. by filming the horrible things that are going on they can perhaps do more good and save more lives by bringing it to the knowledge of an audience than by helping the one person they're filming.