ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a profession fraught with risks, hardships, traumas. The close-calls, abductions, and narrow escapes, the pain they witness, and the stress they endure affect the person and the profession both for positive and negative. For some, the experiences inure them. For others, they expand appreciation for the comforts at home. And still, some bear lifelong scars that impair their ability to continue with the same enthusiasm for their profession. It focuses on journalists' personal and professional lives, heightening insecurity, diminishing enthusiasm for their passion or what many correspondents perceive as their duty, ultimately affecting their reportage. Vice News journalist and producer Andrew Glazer endured a frightful two-day ordeal in Congo that took him months to process and diminished his desire to cover dangerous regions, particularly Congo. Unlike local journalists, soldiers, and residents of danger zones, foreign correspondents usually deploy to the hotspots for shorter durations and with greater freedom to leave, which helps prevent long-lasting psychological injury.
