CptStern
suckmonkey
- Joined
- May 5, 2004
- Messages
- 10,315
- Reaction score
- 62
a long read but worth it imho ..here's some of the highlights
"....during the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that a dozen journalists covering the war "not only [had] been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq but they had in fact been targeted," according to press accounts. Mr. Jordan quickly tried to back off his statement, but the reverberations led to his resignation.
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 [satellite] 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."
"Sadly, out of patriotic correctness, the major U.S.-based news networks went along. Jingoism often displaced journalism. Flag-waving replaced objectivity. It takes courage just to address the issue. Consider CNN's Christiane Amanpour's gutsy but controversial condemnation of "disinformation at the highest levels." Or Ashleigh Banfield's public criticism of "sanitized" coverage that probably cost her her job at MSNBC. They made clear there was an official determination to control the news at all costs."
In this atmosphere, it was inevitable that there were incidents involving journalists. Ask ITN in London what happened to the late Terry Lloyd and his team, who were driving in a clearly marked TV vehicle shot up by U.S. soldiers, who at first denied it. ITN officials said they "got nowhere" with military officials when they tried to investigate the facts surrounding the incident. How bad was it? Ask BBC veteran John Simpson, who, accompanied by a military liaison, was nearly bombed into the next world by a U.S. jet in the North of Iraq, even when the military knew they were there. Two of his colleagues were killed.
"U.S. forces detained and badly mistreated two journalists, one Portuguese and one Israeli, who they believed were spies." According to the NUJ, they were beaten. The incident was not widely reported. (Yes, Iraqi forces also harassed and mistreated journalists. They killed two foreign embeds with a missile attack.) After two journalists died April 8, 2003, at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel when a tank shell was lobbed into a building known by the Pentagon as a site where numerous Western media were based, Reuters called for an independent investigation. 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."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/media/2005/0228target.htm
it's a tactic that's been used in the past so I'm hardly surprised but disturbing nonetheless
here's another article detailing some of the incidents and in the case of Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, tries to justify attacking the media:
"Early in 2002, the BBC sent Gowing to Washington on a mission of pressing, even personal, concern. On November 13, 2001 - the day before Northern Alliance forces captured Kabul - the U.S. military had bombed the BBC's broadcasting facilities there. More intriguing to the journalist in Gowing, the U.S. also destroyed the Kabul bureau of the Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera, which the Bush administration had publicly branded as an al-Qaida propaganda outlet for broadcasting video tapes from Osama bin Laden."
"....during the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that a dozen journalists covering the war "not only [had] been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq but they had in fact been targeted," according to press accounts. Mr. Jordan quickly tried to back off his statement, but the reverberations led to his resignation.
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 [satellite] 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."
"Sadly, out of patriotic correctness, the major U.S.-based news networks went along. Jingoism often displaced journalism. Flag-waving replaced objectivity. It takes courage just to address the issue. Consider CNN's Christiane Amanpour's gutsy but controversial condemnation of "disinformation at the highest levels." Or Ashleigh Banfield's public criticism of "sanitized" coverage that probably cost her her job at MSNBC. They made clear there was an official determination to control the news at all costs."
In this atmosphere, it was inevitable that there were incidents involving journalists. Ask ITN in London what happened to the late Terry Lloyd and his team, who were driving in a clearly marked TV vehicle shot up by U.S. soldiers, who at first denied it. ITN officials said they "got nowhere" with military officials when they tried to investigate the facts surrounding the incident. How bad was it? Ask BBC veteran John Simpson, who, accompanied by a military liaison, was nearly bombed into the next world by a U.S. jet in the North of Iraq, even when the military knew they were there. Two of his colleagues were killed.
"U.S. forces detained and badly mistreated two journalists, one Portuguese and one Israeli, who they believed were spies." According to the NUJ, they were beaten. The incident was not widely reported. (Yes, Iraqi forces also harassed and mistreated journalists. They killed two foreign embeds with a missile attack.) After two journalists died April 8, 2003, at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel when a tank shell was lobbed into a building known by the Pentagon as a site where numerous Western media were based, Reuters called for an independent investigation. 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."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/media/2005/0228target.htm
it's a tactic that's been used in the past so I'm hardly surprised but disturbing nonetheless
here's another article detailing some of the incidents and in the case of Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, tries to justify attacking the media:
"Early in 2002, the BBC sent Gowing to Washington on a mission of pressing, even personal, concern. On November 13, 2001 - the day before Northern Alliance forces captured Kabul - the U.S. military had bombed the BBC's broadcasting facilities there. More intriguing to the journalist in Gowing, the U.S. also destroyed the Kabul bureau of the Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera, which the Bush administration had publicly branded as an al-Qaida propaganda outlet for broadcasting video tapes from Osama bin Laden."
