Reporters on the Job
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• A Helping Hand: Correspondent Nicholas Benequista tracked down one of the women turned away from a health clinic for today's story about Ethiopia's food crisis. He ended up in a tiny village accessible only by a footbridge. "The moment I arrived, I was surrounded; they thought I was an aid worker and brought their malnourished children to me," he says.
After interviewing one woman alone, he offered to drive her to a hospital some 30 miles away. He also paid the doctor's fee for treating her child.
Did his actions influence the quality of his reporting?
"If I can do a little good, and not compromise the reporting, I certainly feel I should do it," he says. "But helping in this case wasn't purely altruistic. I got to spend more time with her, to get more of her story. As a foreigner who must work through an interpreter, it's hard to get Ethiopians to open up. One way around that is to spend more time with them."
– David Clark Scott
World editor