Our World, Their Lens

“It was exploring the unknown and trying to make it known to the rest of the world that led to Dan’s death. In the months before he died he made a name for himself covering the civil war in Somalia. Dan took searing images of the conflict’s innocent victims — skeletal children and starving men and women. His photos appeared in international publications including Newsweek and Time.

After Dan’s death, in an attempt to understand why he was willing to risk his life to go into a country at war just to take pictures, I came up with the idea for the film, “Dying To Tell the Story.” It was a documentary about front-line journalists like South Africa’s Peter Magubane who endured 362 days of solitary confinement for shooting a photograph of a policeman killing an innocent man. Or Christiane Amanpour, who took unthinkable risks as a young reporter for CNN in Bosnia. Directed by Kyra Thompson, the film was distributed by CNN to more than 120 countries.

Filming the documentary helped me finally understand why journalists, why my brother, why so many people’s sons, daughters and parents risk their lives to bring us the news. I learned that the journalists I interviewed had a higher objective for good, and by doing their jobs — putting themselves in dangerous situations and sharing stories of conflict and famine — they were saving lives.”

Amy Eldon, Huffington Post July 12, 2013

Today marks 21 years since Anthony Macharia, Hansi Krauss, Hos Maina, and Dan Eldon were beaten and stoned to death by a mob in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Last summer, we celebrated their lives through a campaign called Living to Tell the Story to celebrate, commemorate and support storytellers of all kinds – writers, journalists, photographers, artists and activists – who shine a light on social causes at home and abroad.

This year we are proud to announce that Dan and his three colleagues lives are being honored and remembered through an interdisciplinary curriculum based on the film, Dying to Tell the Story! This Journeys in Film curriculum includes 8 lesson plans that cover language arts, social studies, visual literacy, visual arts, world history, and specialty areas.

This curriculum is a useful way for educators to teach their students about why journalists’ coverage of international conflicts is so crucial that reporters would risk their lives to do it.

Click here to download this curriculum for free!