SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, 18 September 2014 — I visited this morning with staff of the Salvadoran daily newspaper, La Prensa Grafica, one of the largest and most influential outlets in this Central American country.
Invited by the US Embassy in San Salvador, I spoke with the staff members about the role of journalism in a democratic society.
Especially now, with smart phones and the Internet available to so many, the tools of vibrant citizen journalism are available to vast sectors of this, and many other, societies. I stressed that these tools could/should be used to tell stories with video, which I believe is a much more immediate and intimate medium than is the printed word. And I reviewed my own transition from newspaper reporter to foreign correspondent to photojournalist to documentary filmmaker.
During my week here, I showed some of my work not just in El Salvador but around Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Photo by Bill Gentile)