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Abdulaziz Dino Gidreta
Figure 4: Iconic Photo of A Vulture & A Child
The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on
March 26, 1993 as ‘metaphor for Africa’s despair’. Carter came under criticism for not
helping the girl. “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering
might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene
(Selwyn-Holmes, 2009).
Source:
Selwyn-Holmes, A. (2009, August 12). Vulture stalking a child. Retrieved from
/.
Carter eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo, but he couldn’t enjoy it. “I’m really,
really sorry I didn’t pick the child up,” he confided in a friend. Consumed with the violence
he had witnessed, and haunted by the questions as to the little girl’s fate, he committed
suicide after three months (Selwyn-Holmes, 2009).
The story of the girl has been a major case of discussion well-facilitated by the ‘interna-
tional’ media. The case then was a famously circulated point of debate for journalistic
ethics in communication faculties across the world (it was during my journalistic ethics
class that I myself first known the case).
Consequently, driven by NGO’s fundraising ambitions and their encounters publicized
by their fellow media, the practices of foreign humanitarian interventions exaggeratedly
depicted poverty, hunger, disease, and natural disasters in Africa. They misused their
assignments in Africa mainly by producing or reproducing ethically improper even intol-
erable contents for the purposes of ‘fundraising’. Besides developmental practices, the
humanitarian activities have not yet been engaging local cultural values.
