What I think about when a journalist dies

Another young reporter has died covering a war far from home. She was 26 and the circumstances of her death in the Central African Republic are at this point unclear. But whatever they were, she’s dead.

This kind of news doesn’t sit well. I don’t like anything about it. Awe is darkened by grief and anger.

What a smile.

I wonder about reckless bravery and editors who took advantage of it. I wonder about all those off camera whose lives and deaths never made the wire. I wonder what I would do if i were the editor. I would think of her as my daughter. I would tell her to drop her gear, forget it, get out. Get out now. So I wouldn’t be her editor.

See: French journalist, 26, dies in C. African Republic