Sort of Book Review, but Not Really

My mom bought Jesse a so-called early birthday present. It's Anderson Cooper's book, Dispatches from the Edge. I stole it last Monday and finished it up Tuesday (ah, the joys of having a job where my boss lets me read personal items on the clock). It reads extremely fast, and I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much, had it not been laced with Cooper's interpretation of how his own past ties into his current life's viewings (aka: genocide, death, etc.) While not extremely personal, it's just enough transparency to warrant some sort of space in your heart for the man. Somehow reading it, I also saw bits and pieces of Jesse. Parts of the book made me angry enough to question whether any media tool can be fully used for good, or whether it more often than not just gives cowards in disguise a place to hide while they tell themselves they are heroes who are bringing us stories to "change the world" I once heard a story (probably from Jesse..or either I read it in his Photo District News magazine) about a photographer who was shooting a piece on starvation. At a critical moment in his life, and the life of his subject, he chose to press the button and snap a photo of a starving child reaching for bread. The child died reaching. Upon returning from the trip, the photographer committed suicide, presumably haunted by the question of whether he could have saved the child's life by reaching the bread for him instead of simply photographing the reach. I suppose there is no good answer, yet when I would read about an adernaline rush in Cooper's book, or the hunt for the most tragic of all scenes, I couldn't help but wonder what humanity is. On one hand, the Western public demands shocking images before being moved to action. On the other, this demand seems to fuel some sort of twisted pursuit for horror. Cooper describes one scene, in which he videotaped a woman being beaten, called a whore, and led away to who knows where by a group of men. He said when he was shooting it, he knew it would never make a news story, but he still shot it - relatively safe behind his camera, behind a wall at his hotel. Did he make the right choice, or did he use his camera to be a coward? I don't have the answer to that question.