Dialogue between two men discussing the role of journalists
"In the book of photographs, the most shoking photo for me is the picture of The Burning Monk. It's a famous, very famous news picture and the fact that the photographer himself said that he had a chance to stop the monk burning himself if he had kicked away the petrol can, but the desire to do the perfect picture overweighed that."
"Yeah . He said that as a human being he wanted to kick the can away, and as a reporter, he couldn't. And he was right to take the photograph and not kick the can away."
"I don't agree with that. We were once involved in a dreadful incident in Nigeria but they actually staged the shooting for the TV camera and they picked the people of the hotel and drove them to the execution spot and put the blinded bloke up , tied him to a tree and said " OK, Film it" and one of the cameramen said : " can you hold it? My camera's jammed" and they held it up while he got his camera fixed. Now I think that if everyone of those guys had walked away from that site, they wouldn't have shot anyone. I think if they had walked away or refused to go, they wouldn't have shot."
"It's a very, a very excrutiating point. I'm sure that we all agree that once humanitarian instinct is to intervene, but in the end you'll destroy the all function of journalism as observer and detached. And you'll get the photographers and the reporters shot."
"It's a good question, isn't it? Does the function of journalism outweigh one's position as a human being? "
The script is based on a very old tape recording. It's so old that it's impossible to use!
Actually, it's so old that I could hardly understand a couple of words!