Journalists Take Flak in Iraq:LAURA ROZEN (The Nation

[jbfam4]

http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040112&s=rozen

Journalists Take Flak in Iraq
by LAURA ROZEN



When US Central Command has good news to report in Iraq, as it did after troops from the Fourth Infantry Division captured Saddam Hussein on December 13, it adores the media. But journalists say that when there's bad news--a helicopter crash, a mortar attack--they are increasingly being blocked from covering the story by US soldiers, who frequently confiscate and destroy their film disks and videotapes.

This happened to Detroit Free Press photographer David Gilkey while covering the crash of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter carrying thirty-six US soldiers, shot down near Fallujah on November 2. His film disk was erased by a soldier from the 82nd Airborne, who then forced Gilkey and other journalists on the scene to a site twenty miles away. "Listen, I have respect for these guys," Gilkey says of the soldiers. "I truly understand that they are upset, and angry, that they've lost friends. The point is, however, you don't have the right to take disks and clean them. When did that become standard operating procedure?"

"This is without a doubt the nastiest, scariest conflict that we've seen in half a century," says Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. "It's just very, very dangerous over there. And when the soldiers get very nervous, and one can hardly blame them, they tend to shoot at anything they perceive as shooting at them," including journalists.


Journalists covering the home front complain that their job is becoming more politicized and is being made more difficult by Pentagon red tape. UPI investigative reporter Mark Benjamin wrote a series of reports on the plight of sick soldiers and reservists--including some 8,500 American soldiers evacuated from Iraq for noncombat medical reasons, and the grim living conditions of sick reservists waiting for medical care at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. His stories spurred several congressmen and senators to send staff to the base and call for improved conditions. They may also have made Benjamin the target of Pentagon stonewalling of his subsequent information requests.

[Ready4Change]

1. I've begun noticing attacks against the media...

...through several channels (emails, right wing radio.) I think a few media outlets have been a little more "fair and balanced" than some entities are comfortable with.

I'm currently watching to see if something heavier than the current word sniping will be used to bring the media back in line. I'd be mighty suspiscious if something like an anthrax mailing or bombing of a major media figure were to happen anytime soon. Such would cause me to give much more credence to LIHOP type theories.