10/07/2004 Add a comment

The Washington Post's Kabul bureau chief, Pamela Constable, is using her freetime there to help start an animal shelter for cats and dogs. It leads to an interesting journalism question that has been debated on many levels: To what extent should journalists be helping those they cover? Should a photographer in Africa give food to a starving child? Most people would say yes, but some journalists are very concerned about getting in the way of the stories they cover. And when the starvation is so widespread, how fair is it to favor one child?

Constable seems to stay on the uncontroversial side of the line. She's not directly reporting on Kabul's animals (although I haven't done a search), and she's not covering the Afghan PETA, were there such a thing (although maybe there is). William

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