Press Passes Aren't Bulletproof
Journalism becomes the riskiest job in America once you’re anywhere else.
By Ali Winston, University of Chicago
Wednesday June 7, 2006
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
Bylines in Iraq are matters of life and death. As “the long war” — as it is increasingly labeled by the Pentagon — grinds on past its fourth anniversary, foreign correspondents and their local colleagues live in an environment of fear and intimidation. Sebti, an Iraqi reporter for the Washington Post, who, like many locals, does leg work for Western journalists, said in an interview for Dangerous Assignments, a journal of the Manhattan-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), that he is placed in “double jeopardy” by his occupation. Insurgents view him interchangeably as a “spy,” “infidel,” and “profiteer.” He has little doubt about what will happen should his cover be blown: Since 2004, he says three translators for American firms living in his neighborhood have been murdered. Sebti refuses to divulge his occupation to neighbors, and his paranoia compels him to take different routes to work every day. What would ordinarily be considered extraordinary circumstances for any stateside reporter are commonplace for media workers in Iraq.
On May 29th, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier was injured, and her camerman and soundman were killed, by a car bomb that exploded while they were traveling with a U.S. military convoy. After three months of being held hostage by Iraqi insurgents, freelance reporter Jill Carroll was released unharmed on March 30. Sadly, the fate of dozens of other journalists who shared Ms. Carroll’s misfortune tends to resemble that of Steven Vincent, another kidnapped American freelancer who was murdered along with his translator in August 2005. Since the commencement of hostilities in Iraq over three years ago, 97 media workers have been killed. Such circumstances are by no means unique to Iraq. Journalists occupy an increasingly precarious position, working in a post-9/11 world fraught with transnational terrorism, geopolitical uncertainty, and governments intent on controlling the information to which its population has access.
Though reporting is a hazardous occupation, the trends of the past two years are particularly alarming. For journalists, 2004 was the most dangerous year over the past 20 years: 53 individuals died on the job. Despite a decrease in the overall number of deaths in the industry in 2005 (47), the proportion of media workers that were murdered rose to three-fourths from two-thirds the previous year. This tally doesn’t take into account instances of kidnapping, imprisonment by authorities, or forced closures and intimidation of media outlets. Countries on every continent are involved in restricting and intimidating the press, including two of the world’s largest: China and Russia.
China’s government may have embraced free-market capitalism and opened its economy to the outside world, but the authorities still maintain a stranglehold on their population’s access to information. Internet access to news is filtered with the convenient aid of Google, and undesirable articles bring serious repercussions, as evidenced by the imprisonment of New York Times researcher Zao Yan since 2004. Endemic rioting across the Chinese countryside, such as the December 6th, 2005 demonstration in the village of Dongzhou, where clashes between security forces and protestors led to the deaths of at least three people and the arrest of 13 more, is downplayed in the state-controlled print and broadcast media. Currently, 34 reporters are being held by China’s government, two-thirds of the 125 reporters worldwide who have been thrown in prison for their activities.
After the libertine, anything-goes atmosphere of post Soviet-Russia in the 1990s, in which independent journalism (and rampant corruption) flourished, the election of President Vladimir Putin in 2000 ushered in a new era of increased emphasis on the primacy of the Kremlin in everyday life. This had significant consequences for freedom of the press. State-run print and broadcast media threw their weight behind the government, as exemplified by their unabashed campaigning for the party Putin endorsed, United Russia, in the parliamentary elections of 2003. More alarmingly, the confrontational attitude of Russian authorities towards the media coincides with the murder of 12 journalists and editors since 2000. All these killings have been contract-style hits with apparent links to the victim’s occupation. The most prominent case is that of Russian-American Paul Klebnikov, the editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine’s Russia edition. An outspoken critic of graft and all-too-common illegal business practices, Klebnikov was presumably silenced for his investigations of ties between post-Soviet “robber baron” businessmen and Chechen mafiosi. The official response to dealing with the murders of reporters has been weak: None of the 12 cases have been solved, and investigations are characterized by constant shuffling of police officers, prosecutors, and judges.
In addition to the grave circumstances for reporters in China, Russia, and other places worldwide, the American media faces unprecedented obstacles while covering U.S. troops in Central Asia and the Middle East. Since the invasion of Afghanistan, the embedded reporter has become a prominent fixture in our public consciousness. Such individuals occupy a prominent enough place in America’s collective imagination to be the protagonist of a comic book, Brian Wood’s new series DMZ, which is centered on a rookie reporter caught in the no-man’s-land of Manhattan in a fictional civil war between the East Coast and the rest of the country.
While Wood’s comic goes out of its way to lend an edge of cool to reporting, it also comments on the harsh reality that today’s “journalists and media staff are victims of unprecedented levels of brutality,” according to the Stanhope Centre for communications policy research. In spite of the extensive security precautions and hostile-environment training that major American correspondents receive, they are still vulnerable targets. Bob Woodruff, the then-co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, and cameraman Doug Vogt were severely injured in January 2006 when the 4th Infantry Division convoy they were traveling in hit an improvised explosive device. Journalists are among the favored kidnapping targets for insurgents, demonstrated by the case of Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, two French journalists held hostage for four months by an insurgent group. In total, 41 have been kidnapped since 2004, according to the CPJ.
The United States military bears some responsibility for creating a hostile working environment for the press. Arab satellite news networks such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya have long incurred the wrath of U.S. officers for their critical coverage of occupying coalition forces in Iraq, demonstrated by the forces’ temporary closure of Al-Arabiya’s Bagdhad offices in November 2003. Al Jazeera alleged in late 2005 that President Bush advocated bombing Al-Jazeera’s Qatar headquarters. (In November 2001, USAF bombers destroyed a clearly marked Al-Jazeera bureau in Kabul). What’s more, an Al-Jazeera assistant cameraman, Sami al-Haj, has been held in Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray since he was arrested by Pakistani police on the Afghan border in December 2001. Al-Haj faces no formal charges: The U.S. military, which the cameraman accuses of torture, has spent the past four years “trying to get Sami to become an informant.” America has considerable problems at home regarding freedom of the press. The most public cases have been those involving the disclosure of confidential sources, such as the New York Times’ Judith Miller and Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper. Although these cases are notable for the threat they pose to the capability of news organizations to operate independently from constant government scrutiny, American freelancers are currently the hardest hit segment of the United States press corps.
Over the past 20 years, as media ownership has sought to prioritize cost efficiency and profitability as business enterprises, freelancers have been increasingly relied upon to provide a significant proportion of news copy. Cost-cutting measures in overseas bureaus and the growing lack of interest of many Americans in foreign affairs have especially affected this development. This is not a new phenomenon: The subject has received considerable attention since the early 1990s, especially during the first Gulf War. However, the current American occupation of Iraq and our significant military presence in Afghanistan has stretched the capacity of news organizations to cover events. As a result, the freelancers, who have shouldered the lion’s share of news gathering, have been left exposed by a lack of proper hostile-environment training and been hung out to dry by their employers who oftentimes refuse to cover a reporter’s field insurance.
Organizations do exist for the explicit purpose of protecting the livelihood and well-being of reporters around the world, but they are a mixed bag. The International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) is a global network of 72 non-governmental organizations dedicated to monitoring press freedom and treatment across the globe. Within this network, two groups stand out for their resources and/or political leanings. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), founded in 1981 by foreign correspondents, is one of the most active such groups, organizing protests and lobbying politicians to act against the mistreatment of media workers.
Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) is a similar Paris-based organization run by the Doctors without Borders patron, Louis Ménard. While its protests, publications, and lobbying are flashier and much higher profile than CPJ, grants from governments provide 19 percent of RSF’s total funding. RSF has also been accused of following the lead of the U.S. Department of State in leveling criticism against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Although some press advocacy groups such as RSF have engaged in controversial behavior, the majority of such organizations are doing an admirable job in raising the public’s consciousness of the heightened risk present in news gathering work today. Charters and bills of rights for freelance writers are being produced and distributed widely by groups like the International Federation of Journalists and CPJ. On a more practical level, trusts and scholarships, such as the Rory Peck Trust and the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund, have been established to sponsor hostile-environment training and educate the public about the dangers faced by journalists in the field. These funds, established in memory of reporters killed on assignment, receive funding from major news organizations, such as Reuters and the Associated Press, and are widely praised. While such efforts are a solid foundation for improving working conditions and public awareness of foreign news gathering’s darker side, there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done. The rules of political and military confrontation have altered so much that anyone, anywhere, at any time, is a potentially valuable target. Perhaps governments can alter these circumstances by reducing the impetus for terrorists attacks on civilians of any type, including journalists. Until that day arrives, however, the stories of Steven Vincent, Paul Klebnikov, and Sami al-Haj will remain sadly common
An earlier version of this piece ran in Diskord, a Campus Progress sponsored publication.
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Comments
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Great article. One thing to note: RSF does not have any relation to or affiliation with Doctors Without Borders. And its head is Robert Ménard.
— tibetibet - Jun 24, 03:00 PM - #