By Fatima Abdulrahman
Generally speaking, humanity plays a vital role in every journalistic field. It is the quality of being benevolent and conduct of being fully rational towards people.
Photojournalism is a form of journalism that employs images in telling a news story. A photojournalist serves as a savior to people’s predicament. Aside from photojournalism, a journalist should exhibit humanity, broadcast people’s duels and call the right hand to order.
However, a photojournalist shouldn’t take humanity for granted, just like Kelvin Carter who, in 1993, shot an image in Sudan of a suffering and malnourished girl being watched by a symbol of death, the vulture. The image portrayed the struggling period of the United Nations against a great famine. But as rumors had it, he committed suicide for guilt of not saving the child few months later.
Kevin Carter could have saved the girl if he hadn’t allowed his career to prevail. It served as a deterrent to other photojournalists whose aim was to earn fame.
A fame without prevailed humanity is vain to the world. But I am not saying photojournalists should not do their job. But they should have the fear of humanity, there should be transparency and honesty in their work. In photojournalism, a picture depicts all messages journalists try to convey to attract response.
Victim’s permission serves the most important in photojournalism . A photojournalist seeks the victim’s consent and analyzes the reason to justify any misconception afterwards.
Journalists with humanity exhibit great judgment, clarify the need to take the picture in depleting people’s flaws and get help: justice,favors, security, housing among others.
In every work, humanity is needed, it should precede in anything one indulge into, because it brings out a very beautiful result.