CPJ research shows that six journalists have been killed in Somalia in 2012 alone, and 42 have been killed in the last two decades, one of the highest tolls in the world.
(CPJ/IFEX) – May 24, 2012 – The following is a CPJ Blog post:
By Nicole Schilit/CPJ Guest Blogger
Jeffrey Gettleman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent, says he travels with “a small militia” whenever he reports from Somalia, the East African country afflicted by armed insurgency, poverty, and hunger. As intrusive as the security detail might be, he feels far more fortunate than the local reporters who face sustained and often deadly risks, or the freelance journalists who don’t have the extensive support system the Times can provide.
Gettleman spoke to a crowd of about 100 at the Half King pub in Manhattan on Tuesday in the first event in the new CPJ discussion series, “CPJ Debrief.” Gettleman, the East Africa bureau chief for the Times, has worked in the region for six years. With East Africa’s needs so acute, and the volume of international reporting on the decline, the assignment has given him a chance to have a profound impact.
The stories affect him as well. On Tuesday, Gettleman read from a November 2011 Times piece in which he tells the story of a Somali man whose daughter died at age 3. “Somalis are not somehow wired differently from the rest of us. They are not numb to suffering. They are not grief-proof. I’ll never forget the expression on Mr. Kufow’s face as he stumbled out of Benadir Hospital into the penetrating sunshine with his lifeless little girl in his arms. He may not have been weeping openly. But he looked as if he could barely breathe.”
