For those that don’t know, Richard Engle is the chief correspondent for NBC News. He has also been kidnapped roughly…a thousand times.
No, I’m not sure about the exact number of times he’s been tied up and thrown in the back of a truck, but it’s happened to him a couple times over his decade of covering the Middle-East for NBC——where he’s been put in countless dangerous situations, whether they involved a formal kidnapping or not——and it just happened to him again.
In fact, the most motivating factor in writing this article is because Engel was, surprise, surprise, kidnapped in Syria, and released today. Why would a fairly well-known reporter go to a country that (right now) is definitely in the top 5 most dangerous on the planet? Whoosh…mmmm…maybe Engel’s got a death wish?
Which begs the question, how long can this excellent, but danger-prone reporter cheat the reaper? And what assignment will be the one that finally gets him killed? Going over to Iran for shits and giggles? Wandering through the Congo on a Christmas caroling mission? Heading over to North Korea for tea time with Kim Jung Un?
This guy faces down danger like nobody’s business, and most of us think we’re hot shit if we kill a spider in the bathroom. In all seriousness, Engel is a real journalist, the kind nobody at Faux News will ever be. He follows down real stories instead of just partisan-spin, and he’s interested in a world larger than just the United States (something I can’t entirely say about some of the MSNBC talking heads). He’s a journalist’s journalist and I hope he never dies.