Tyler Hicks on the New York Times Somalia Famine Image
NPR interviewed Tyler Hicks, the New York Times photojournalist whose front page image of a starving child in Somalia has sparked a lot of discussion. Hicks was asked whether a photograph can still change the world.
“It has a way of searing itself into your mind,” he says. “It’s something you can study. It doesn’t just whip by you over your morning coffee.”
While not interviewed in the referenced Salon.com article, is does deal heavily with why the Times decided to run the image. Quoting editor Bill Keller:
“We’d already decided to front Jeffrey’s powerful story, and it would have felt like journalistic malfeasance not to include Tyler’s powerful photography,” he said. “I know many readers found the picture disturbing. That’s good. The deaths of thousands of Somali children ought to disturb us, at least.”