Reuters, a big-leagues news service owned by a $13 billion multinational corporation, is ducking critical questions about the death of a teenage war photographer who’d been selling pictures to the agency.
It’s troubling to think that the last word on Molhem’s reputation might hinge on the slideshow, the visual association to a thickening scandal and a more nominal connection to suspect deeds.
The late Molhem Barakat is someone whom one might find quite difficult to pigeonhole between these two documenters of conflict, falling somewhere between activist/propagandist and photojournalist.
Was Molhem Barakat 17 when working for Reuters?
If so, why is a child working for one of the largest media organizations in the world?
Why would a media organization hire someone who had previously tried to join Al Qaeda?
Did Reuters provide the expensive camera gear to Barakat?
Reuters did report that not only was Molhem Barakat a photographer on their books but also an ‘activist’. According to the reporter Hannah Lucinda Smith, Molhem was an ‘aspiring suicide bomber‘ who tried to join an Al-Qaeda offshoot earlier this year but was turned down for being unsuitable (Molem’s name is changed in her article).
