Dead Messengers: How the U.S. Military Threatens Journalists

(This is a four-part series)

Dead Messengers: How the U.S. Military Threatens Journalists
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Investigation

Part I | Hearing What Eason Jordan Said
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022405A.shtml

Thursday 24 February 2005

Do American soldiers purposely kill journalists, as CNN's Eason Jordan supposedly said? Or, could the problem be even worse?
Eason Jordan, CNN's freshly ousted news chief, hardly knew what hit him. On Thursday, January 27, he was schmoozing with the global A-List at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. On Friday, February 11, he was looking for work.

"After 23 years at CNN," he wrote, "I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."

"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise."

Corporate media managers had long envied Jordan's diplomatic skill, as when he arranged CNN's live coverage from Baghdad of the first Gulf War. But political conservatives reviled him for being "too liberal." They also felt he had cozied up to Saddam.

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Part II | Army Failed to Probe
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022805A.shtml

Monday 28 February 2005

"Journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians within the meaning of Article 50, paragraph 1. . . . They shall be protected as such under the Conventions and this Protocol. . . ."
Additional Protocol I (1977) of the 1949 Geneva Conventions
"There's nothing sacrosanct about a hotel with a bunch of journalists in it."
Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), The Washington Post, April 9, 2003.

As America's Third Infantry Division took control of Baghdad on the morning of April 8, 2003, an M1A1 Abrams tank stood in the middle of the Al-Jumhuriya Bridge, which spans the Tigris River. Over a mile away, on a balcony of the 17-story Palestine Hotel, a French TV crew filmed the tank as it slowly swung its turret and fired almost directly at where they were standing.

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Its Attack on Palestine Hotel
Exhibit A | Reporters Without Borders: Two Murders and a Lie

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022505A.shtml

Thursday 15 January 2004

An investigation of the US Army's firing at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003.
Reporters Without Borders called today for the reopening of the enquiry into who was really responsible for the US Army's "criminal negligence" in shooting at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003 and causing the death of two journalists - Ukrainian cameramen Taras Protsyuk (of Reuters news agency) and Spaniard José Couso (of the Spanish TV station Telecinco).

The call came in a report of the press freedom organisation's own in-depth investigation of the incident, which gathered evidence from journalists in the hotel at the time, from others "embedded" with US Army units and from the US military soldiers and officers directly involved.

The report said US officials at first lied about what happened and then, in an official statement four months later, exonerated the US Army from any mistake or error of judgement. The report provides only some of the truth about the incident, which needs to be further investigated to establish exactly who was responsible.
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Kick

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/media/2005/0228target.htm


Before the war, the Pentagon issued warnings that sounded like threats, saying it would not guarantee the safety of journalists who were not officially "embedded" into assigned U.S. military units. Pentagon publicist Victoria Clarke, around the time the war began, said that journalists who went out on their own were "putting themselves at risk."

On March 8, 2003, 12 days before the invasion, Kate Aidie, then a war correspondent for the BBC, said on RTE radio in Ireland that she was told by Pentagon officials "that any uplinks by journalists would be fired on" by coalition aircraft. What they were doing was creating an environment of intimidation and threat. This was a ploy to ensure that the reporters who did go to Iraq without Pentagon cooperation would be blamed when anything happened.

<snip>

...The International Federation of Journalists angrily demanded a real probe. Phillip Knightley, a respected historian on war and media and author of "The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and
Myth-Maker From the Crimea to Kosovo," correctly said, "There will be no investigation." He added, "I believe that the occasional shots fired at media sites are not accidental and that war correspondents will now be targeted."

As a former CNN producer, I find that the Jordan incident chilled debate and diverted us from the real issue of how the U.S. military spun media coverage and why networks went along. A number of journalists covering Iraq-not just Jordan-continue to believe journalists were targeted. The citizens-initiated World Tribunal on Iraq, which met in Rome in February, asks a question that can't be deflected: "Are Mr. Jordan's claims accurate?" In its report, it joined "the calls by international media groups and the families of dead journalists for a full independent investigation by an international team of journalists who should be given the right to question members of the military."

"If independent journalists can be killed with impunity," said the report, "and executives forced out for asking about it, aren't we facing something more serious than has been raised so far?"

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before Abu Ghraib became a household name. It seems that most of the journalists that get killed are either anti-war or on the side of the civilians.


US troops 'crazy' in killing of cameraman

Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian

Journalists who were with a Reuters news cameraman shot dead by US troops while filming outside a Baghdad prison yesterday accused the soldiers of behaving in a "crazy" and negligent fashion.

They claimed the Americans had spotted the Reuters crew outside the jail half an hour before Mazen Dana was killed and must have realised he was not a guerrilla carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The chief executive of Reuters, Tom Glocer, said: "The latest death is hard to bear. That's why I am calling upon the highest levels of the US government for a full and comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."

Dana, 43, is the second Reuters cameraman to be killed since the US-led force invaded Iraq. His death brought to 17 the number of journalists or their assistants who have died in Iraq since the war began on March 20.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1021480,00.html

that "unembedded" journalists would be considered "fair game?"

Government lies are like rat droppings in clear soup. Obvious and revolting.

hard to keep track of all the horror stories...

now we know why most Amerikans have NO clue about the horrors of war.

almost too dangerous to report on, and in more ways than one.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/02/11.html#a1567

Eason Jordan resigns

via Jay Rosen

Just got off the phone with Howard Kurtz. It's confirmed. Eason Jordan resigned today about an hour ago

This is the statement CNN put out:

After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq.

I listened to Senator Dodd on Imus say that he thought he heard Jordan imply that U.S. troops were targeting journalists at the conference. I think Davos should release the tapes.

Steve Weissman | Part III: Targeting the Media the American Way

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030605A.shtml

Sunday 06 March 2005

Words and images are a public trust and for this reason I will continue with my work regardless of the hardships and even if it costs me my life.
Mazen Dana on receiving an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mazen Dana lived a charmed life, or so it seemed. A Palestinian from the West Bank city of Hebron, he worked as a television cameraman for the British news agency Reuters and was one of their most experienced conflict journalists.

A towering, chain-smoking bear of a man with a ruddy complexion, as a colleague described him, the 43-year-old Dana had paid a price. Israeli soldiers and settlers beat him unconscious on more than one occasion. The soldiers also broke his hands twice and shot him dozens of times with rubber bullets and live ammunition. He had the scars - and video - to prove it. Yet, he always managed to pull through and - almost as important to those of us in this crazy business - he usually came away with the story.

Far beyond the West Bank, his peers recognized Mazen Dana's courage and the worth of what he did. In November 2001, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) honored him with an International Press Freedom Award for his coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Ted Koppel's Nightline interviewed him at length. In March 2003, PBS's Frontline/World featured him in its documentary "In the Line of Fire."

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