Shooting "Libération": when information is threatened

Yesterday morning, a young photographer, aged 23, has been shot in Paris. Associations such as "Reporters without frontiers" report everyday on journalists being injured or killed for their work worldwide. Only this time this photographer was in a lift, in the entrance hall of French national newspaper "Libération". He wasn't working yet. He was charging his camera, unaware of what was going to happen. A man arrived, didn't speak a word, and opened fire on the first person he could see. Within seconds, the photographer collapsed, seriously injured. Within seconds, this man's life has been changed forever. We don't know the reason for it. But how could there be one? There is no reason for fatality. There is none, yet, it's extremely shocking to think that in our so-called civilization this kind of random and unfair event might cost a young man his life. Beyond the act itself, which looks like an isolated action committed by an unbalanced person who obviously holds a grudge against the press, this attack is also threatening all means of information. In what kind of society do we live, where newspaper's headquarters have to be protected? Do we have to install security checks at the entrance of every building out there because we are unable to shield ourselves from the act of one amongst millions? There are so many sad questions raised by this isolated yet devastating attack. They can't be answered because what happened isn't rational. What is, though, is the desire to convey information, to inform, to instruct through the circulation of knowledge. And "Libération" means freedom. Freedom of information. Neither its journalists nor any other out there will stop informing because violence won't silence them, as long as some of them are (still) standing. They were, are and always will be the eyes of our world.

If you have time please check Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders .