(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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