By: Shabana Aqil
BLUE BELL, PA--The world of communications has lost another journalist. Steven Sotloff traveled to Turkey and was captured by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria(ISIS) at the border of Turkey and Syria in late August. Sotloff is the second journalist ISIS beheaded this year. Unfortunately, Sotloff isn’t the first victim of this horrible act of terrorism. In fact, there have been countless victims within the last 13 years.
Is it therefore a risk to work in media? How much has or will the field of Journalism decline? Are more college students looking into other fields of media because of a fear for safety?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporters, correspondents, and broadcast news analysts will have a 13 percent decline in the next eight years because students are finding other ways to get news or not tuning in to the news at all. A random sampling of students around the college community about their thoughts of Steven Sotloff’s tragic death revealed that a majority of the students were unaware of the story and the journalist.
According to Professor Allen Schear, assistant professor of communication here at Montco, the recent events of ISIS or the death of Sotloff would not be the reason that the journalism industry would decline or prevent more college students from studying journalism. Professor Schear says, “The beheading by ISIS has not deferred journalists from reporting the news. War and civil strife have been reported since Roman times and will continue to make news no matter how difficult or gruesome the story.”
Case in point: one COM student shared her hopes to further her education in Communications and hopefully travel the world for the news media industry. She feels that “although Sotloff as well as other reporters have died at the hands of terrorists, they pursued their careers with passion.”
Professor Schear also shared an old adage from the late war photographer Robert Capa, “if your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
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