Saturday night's panel "The Media and Warfare," as well as the entire EPIIC International Symposium this year, was dedicated to photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington, who was killed on Apr. 20, 2011 while reporting on the Libyan civil war.
U.S. Marine Brendan O'Byrne, who was heavily featured in Hetherington's work, including his Academy Award-nominated film "Restrepo," a collaboration with Sebastian Junger, discussed his relationship with Hetherington and thanked him for his work.
"[With the film], it finally became real to people in America what we were going through in Afghanistan," O'Byrne said.
O'Byrne also awarded recent Tufts graduate Elizabeth Herman (LA ‘10) with the first-ever Tim Hetherington Award. Herman received a $2500 grant for her photography of women during and post-conflict, ranging from those who had served in the Vietnam and Bangladesh wars decades ago to the recent Egyptian conflict.
The panel was moderated by Michael Fishman, a junior member of the EPIIC Colloquium.
New York Times Senior Reporter Carlotta Gall discussed her career, including covering the First Chechen War and reporting from Afghanistan for the past ten years.
Northeastern University Assistant Professor Jeff Howe, an author, talked about the changing role of a journalist in the 21st century, a time in which journalists often become targets themselves and are killed for doing their job of delivering news to the world.
Author and blogger Daniel Bennett offered his opinion on the impact of blogging and social media on the BBC's coverage of war, which was the focus of his Ph.D. from Kings College London.
"We would verify, and then we would publish," Bennett said regarding the BBC's standard reporting procedure. "Today, the online news environment means that journalists have to engage with news and information that is potentially inaccurate … If you want to remain relevant in a news organization, then you need to be publishing and verifying at the same time as well."
Chief of Public Information at the United Nations Political Office for Somalia Nick Birnback (LA ‘92), a former EPIIC student, gave the audience another perspective on media in warfare. He described the process of making a press release as not conducive to real time, since anyone can immediately post information on the internet while the United Nations must go through several rounds of editing before releasing a statement.
The last speaker was photojournalist and Founding Director of the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice at the Institute for Global Leadership Gary Knight, who showed some of his photography work, most recently of the Iraq war.
