Current News in Context
March 25, 2005
Steve Fainaru, with the Washington Post Foreign Service addresses some questions around the claims that 85 Guerilla fighters were killed in a raid on Tuesday. Press reports have been at odds all week, with little hope of clarification. It highlights the danger of relying too heavily on government reports, this time from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. These important sources of information should be challenged and confirmed with independent sources. Unfortunately, that is becoming more and more difficult in Iraq, as journalists are greatly challenged in trying to capture the full scope of the war and occupation.
Mariah Blake, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review addresses some of these issues and the broader implications of limits on press freedom from threats and intimidation. Noting that journalists have been killed by US troops, individuals, and guerilla forces, there follows a detailed analysis of the pressure that Arab media outlets increasingly experience. From the banning of Al Jazeera, to the bombing of Al Arabiya, to the threats against Asharq Al-Awsat. It is an important article.
Doubts surface regarding Tuesday battle: Claim of 85 Rebel Deaths Questioned
BAGHDAD, March 24 -- New details about an intense battle between insurgents and Iraqi police commandos supported by U.S. forces cast doubt Thursday on Iraqi government claims that 85 rebels were killed at what was described as a clandestine training camp.
Accounts of the fighting continued to indicate that a major battle involving dozens of insurgents occurred Tuesday on the eastern shore of Tharthar Lake, which is about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad. However, two U.S. military officials said Thursday that no bodies were found by American troops who arrived at the scene after the fighting. A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said he presumed the announced death toll was accurate, but he played down the scope of the fighting."
In the deadly cauldron of Iraq, even the Arab media are being pushed off the story
By Mariah Blake
Over the last decade, Middle Eastern history has happened, in large part, on Al Jazeera. The Qatar-based satellite channel had the only foreign reporters inside Iraq when U.S. forces launched a four-day assault, known as Operation Desert Fox, in 1998. In October 2001 its cameras - the only ones inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan - captured exclusive footage of the American-led bombardment. When bombs started hitting Baghdad in March 2003, all the American networks, and many European crews, had abandoned the city. Al Jazeera stayed for a close-up view.
History is still being made in Iraq as the country struggles toward independence. But Al Jazeera isn't there to watch it unfold. Last August Iraqi officials closed the station's Baghdad bureau and barred it from operating in the country. Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera's closest competitor, drastically cut its Iraqi operations after insurgents bombed its offices there in October, killing five employees and injuring fourteen. And Asharq Al-Awsat, one of the two largest pan-Arab dailies, shuttered its Baghdad bureau in December after insurgents threatened to blow it up. A number of Arab journalists have also been detained, some even killed, by jittery American troops.
In a war where the various factions seem to want everyone - including the press - to choose sides, the Arab media have found themselves under attack from every direction. That has far-reaching implications. Western reporters, faced with the threat of death, began retreating to fortified compounds months ago. Now, with pressure mounting, Arab journalists, along with Arab translators and fixers employed by international news organizations, are retreating, too. The result is that firsthand reporting is getting squeezed out. When it comes to covering the Iraq conflict - one of the most important stories of our time - even the Arab media are finding themselves increasingly reliant on secondhand accounts and official reports from Washington and Baghdad, and less able to gauge how events are playing out in the lives of ordinary Iraqis. "We can no longer get close to people's suffering, people's hopes, people's dreams," says Nabil Khatib, Al Arabiya's executive editor for news. "We no longer know what's really going on because we can no longer get close to reality."
In early 2003 a number of new satellite channels scrambled to get on the air in time to cover the looming Iraq conflict. The most robust of them, Al Arabiya, promised to provide a more moderate alternative to Al Jazeera, which has drawn the ire of virtually every Arab government as well as U.S. officials. But it was soon engulfed in the controversy that had dogged its rival. Both stations outraged the U.S. government by focusing on the war's human toll, and by airing messages from insurgents and images of slain soldiers.
They also angered members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which was formed in July 2003 and wasted little time cracking down on the satellite stations. For two weeks beginning in September 2003, the council locked Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera out of official press conferences and government ministries. In November, the council shut down Al Arabiya's Baghdad office for more than two months after it aired an audiotape, purportedly of Saddam Hussein urging Iraqis to resist the American-led occupation. The charge: "incitement to murder." In January 2004, the council banned Al Jazeera from official functions after a guest on one of its talk shows alleged that Israel was trying to exert influence in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Arab journalists were growing angry at the U.S. government's failure to provide for their security. In March 2004, more than twenty of them protested by walking out of a press conference with Secretary of State Colin Powell. Before leaving, they demanded an investigation into the deaths of two Al Arabiya employees who were shot the previous day by U.S. forces while driving away from a checkpoint as another car sped toward it. (Witnesses believe soldiers started shooting because they thought the approaching car was a suicide bomber. And U.S. officials later said the journalists were shot by accident and expressed regret.) Other incidents also loomed large in Arab journalists' minds. On April 8, 2003, a U.S. missile destroyed Al Jazeera's Baghdad headquarters, killing the correspondent Tareq Ayyoub. In November 2003, two Al Jazeera employees were arrested in separate incidents and taken to Abu Ghraib. One of them, Salah Hassan, was detained while filming the aftermath of a bombing. Security forces arriving on the scene apparently suspected he was involved in setting the blast. Hassan says he was beaten and forced to stand naked for hours in the freezing cold, then forced to wear a jumpsuit that was covered in someone else's fresh vomit. Both Al Jazeera employees were eventually released for lack of evidence. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the cases.
***
Killing the Messengers
^ Top of page |
 |
Search site
Email Updates Sign Up to Have Posts Emailed to You Recent Posts
Once Beautiful Baghdad
Heavy Fighting / Fallujah / Reconstruction
Report Backs / Counting the Iraqi Dead (Action Ale...
Two Years Later
Through the eyes of a child
Parliament / War Spending Bill Passes / Troop With...
New Government Announced / Car Bombs
Lawsuit / Town Hall Meetings / Journalist Released...
Stand for Peace
Violence / Funding for War / Lack of Reconstructio...
Archives
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
April 2007
Atom Feed 
|
Email this page