News and Journalism

January 17, 2009 - Maulana

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We were done with the academic portion of our seminar; however, we were given passes to attend the Newseum. The Newseum is a museum dedicated to the news and journalism in the U.S. Why does such a museum exist? Well according to the orientation video, the news contains the full breadth of the human experience. I was skeptical at first, but the Newseum presented the materials and exhibits in a way that made you see the components differently. There were countless exhibits that ranged from evidence from famous trials to a portion of the Berlin wall.

The first exhibit I saw featured Pulitzer Prize winning photographs. Unfortunately, great photographs often depict things that are difficult to look at. There was a high and low point for me in the exhibit. The high point came at the very beginning of the exhibit. There was an exhilarating picture of two children on horseback, their faces beaming in front of a riotous moving green background Looking at the picture left me breathless but the story behind it made it more stunning. Apparently, the two children were just a small portion of thousands of children, from South America, who had taken it upon themselves to find their parents who had gone to the U.S. to find work. These two particular children had made it from Honduras to Mexico.

The low point of the exhibit came unexpectedly. A small photograph showed the picture of an emaciated child kneeling with her face to the ground with a vulture off in the distance but still close enough to be of some concern. I thought the child was performing Salaat, the Islamic ritual prayer. Then I read the background story. The photo was taken in 1994 during the Sudanese famine and the little girl had collapsed on her way to a feeding station. The photographer, Kevin Carter, saw the little girl in her predicament but he had been warned not to touch the famine stricken people because of the danger of disease. So he chased the vulture away and the vulture came back and he chased it away again, sat under a tree, cried and took that picture. The story does not end in a way I wish to continue but rather it spoke to me about how deeply ones work can affect you and change you for life.

We are all faced with difficult choices everyday but few of us have to make such difficult choices on behalf of others. How much more difficult must it be to make decisions on behalf of millions, with a clear conscience and sure of your choice.

Michael Genovese said to us one day at the beginning of his lecture "Barack Obama fought long and hard to be the president and now that he won, he's thinking...'What the hell did I get myself into?'" As a country, every four years we elect a person we hope will make not only the difficult decisions but the right ones, and such is the case with Barack Obama. We have entrusted him with a heavy burden and as the old adage goes, "To whom much is given, much is expected."

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