Four Freed Journalists Speak About Libyan Captivity

At a panel discussion held on March 31, the four New York Times foreign correspondents who were detained in Libya last month spoke about the conditions of their captivity and their continued commitment to covering dangerous conflicts. 

Beirut Bureau Chief Anthony Shadid, photographers Tyler Hicks and Lindsay Addario and reporter/videographer Stephen Farrell, whose captivity we've written about before, spoke at Columbia University as part of a panel organized by the the Columbia Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

While many have criticized the Times for sending a woman into a war zone, Addario says she will continue covering conflict despite her own harrowing experience, which included getting punched and regularly groped:

The New York Times would never ask someone to go into a war zone if they didn't want to, and I think there are readers who are clearly very ignorant if they think The New York Times would ever do that. I make my own decisions as a woman. If I want to cover conflict, that's my prerogative.

For complete coverage of the discussion from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism blog, click here. 

Below is a a video recording of the event, which you can watch directly in your browser: