Professionalism and the sad legacy of Kevin Carter
In April 1994, South African photographer Kevin Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this photo of a vulture stalking a Sudanese girl. In May, he went to New York city to receive the award. In July, he connected the exhaust of his pickup truck to a hose and gassed himself to death.
The moral: journalists do need to distance themselves from their stories. This distancing explains, at least in part, why journalists often come across as cynical, sceptical and hardened people. It comes with the job.
Comment by Dr. Sam Winch: Let me clear something up about the picture: Kevin Carter did not let the girl die. She was actually very close to a refugee centre when the picture was taken. Carter said she was already a patient. Look closely and you'll see a hospital bracelet on her arm. He said she was in no danger at that point, that vultures never eat or attack live people. Carter said he saw a lot of worse things than what was shown in that picture (such as vultures eating corpses), and he said it was the images of things he did not take pictures of were what really haunted him--those horrible images of death in the Sudan that were etched in his mind, and the fact that his best friend (another photojournalist) was killed in fighting in South Africa--were probably what drove him to commit suicide.