Tag Archives: Bill Keller

Tyler Hicks’ Somalia Photo Stirs Reactions

Posted on August 3, 2011 | 22 comments

Four months ago, Westport native Tyler Hicks and 3 New York Times correspondents — including fellow Staples grad Lynsey Addario — were captured in Libya.

Last month Tyler was back in Africa, chronicling South Sudan‘s independence.

Now he’s in Somalia.  Yesterday the Times ran his harrowing photo of a starving child on Page 1.

According to the Huffington Post, the photo touched many hearts.

It outraged others.

Huffington Post reports:  “While jarring, Times executive editor Bill Keller told (us) that the decision to publish was ‘kind of a no-brainer.'”  The photo was “pretty much the consensus” of the top editors at the paper’s 4 p.m. meeting.

Keller added:

… We realize, of course, that the story du jour is the debt vote — to which we devoted the lead story and upwards of four pages this morning — but there’s no reason that has to eclipse a human catastrophe in Africa.  Readers can follow more than one important story at a time.  Jeffrey (Gettleman, the reporter) and Tyler went to great trouble and some risk to get as close as they could to the calamity in Somalia.  They sent us a harrowing story and vivid, arresting photographs.  We put them before the attention of our readers.  That’s our job.

Over 500 Huffington Post readers commented.  Many praised the Times’ decision — and Tyler’s photo.

One wrote:  “Guess it’s hard for some in their air conditioned rooms eating 3 good meals a day with a nice home to go to to see this reality huh?  Shame on us.”

Another said:  “How horrifically sad to be offended by the sight of a starving child.  Perhaps it is the conscience of those offended that pricks them so hard they cannot stand it.”

The Times’ website includes 15 heart-rending photos by Tyler, including this one:

(Photo/Tyler Hicks for the New York Times)

Click here for a full  — and haunting — slideshow.

Last night, Tyler was interviewed on the CBS Evening News, by anchor Scott Pelley.  Tyler described the dismal situation:

Everywhere in the city there are people streaming in.  Particularly the thing that jumped out at me were the amount of children and how incredibly frail they were.   There are women – every single one is carrying what looks like skin and bones and I honestly — there were moments that I didn’t notice that the child they were carrying was alive until they shifted and you could see that the child was moving.

Click here for the full CBS Evening News video.

 

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Bill Keller Focuses On Lynsey Addario

Posted on May 11, 2011 | 1 comment

The sexual pawing of New York Times photographer (and Staples graduate) Lynsey Addario in Libya earlier this year focused a lens on the role of photographers — particularly females — in war zones.

Lynsey Addario

From the national airwaves to the comments section of “06880,” Americans debated the perils — and positives — of putting people in harm’s way, just to get a picture.  (Or — put another way — in the service of history and humanity).

Now Times executive editor Bill Keller has weighed in.

Writing in last Sunday’s Magazine, Keller discussed in broad strokes the imperatives and moral burdens of wartime photography.

Toward the end, he addressed Addario and other female photographers’ specific situation:

(Some) critics demanded to know how we could justify sending women into places where the threat of bombs and bullets is compounded by the threat of sexual violence.   On that question, I defer to some of the intrepid Times women who have distinguished themselves in a field that is mostly populated by men — war journalists like Carlotta Gall, Alissa Rubin, Sabrina Tavernise or Lynsey herself, who says that compared with the beatings her male colleagues suffered during six days in Libyan captivity, “I felt like I got off easy.”  The women who do this work will tell you that the question is patronizing, that they are capable of making their own choices and that, importantly, they have access to stories that men do not.

Lynsey recalls covering sexual assault as a weapon of war in Congo and in Darfur.  The victims were more comfortable entrusting their stories and showing their wounds to a woman.  In Muslim societies, Lynsey points out, female reporters and photographers have access to homes, to women and girls, that would be off-limits to any man who was not part of the family.

Keller concluded with a strong endorsement of female photographers:

For a sample of what you’d be missing if Lynsey Addario worked only in safe places, visit her 2010 portfolio of women in Afghanistan, who, in despair over brutal marriages or ostracism, set themselves on fire.

Lynsey Addario — and other photographers, like fellow Timesman and Westporter Tyler Hicks — travel to the danger zones of the world.  Their courageous work enhances our understanding of the world, even as it raises new questions about it.

As Lynsey’s boss notes, it is a mission they — and he — take with their eyes wide open.

And, thankfully, their cameras too.

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