Media
Death Toll on Rise in War Zones
International Herald tribune – January 27, 2005
Doreen Carvajal
Being labeled a member of the press no longer affords a
journalist protection
PARIS At the headquarters of Reporters Without Borders here, bullet-proof jackets can be borrowed in exchange for a €900 deposit, presentation of a press card and a round-trip ticket to Iraq.
But takers are few for flak jackets marked "PRESS," a label that lately has become more of a target than protection in Iraq, where 62 journalists and media assistants have died since the United States invaded in March 2003.
The grim toll spreads across 14 countries and includes 45 Iraqis. And the count is part of a broader trend, with the number of journalists killed worldwide reaching its highest level in 10 years: 129 dead in 2004. Those figures are prompting agonizing debates in newsrooms, where top executives are quietly weighing the competing values of story versus survival - and in some cases deciding to call a retreat from Iraq.
The soul-searching is particularly wrenching in newsrooms that have lost journalists to modern warfare's escalating hazards, from kidnapping and extortion to execution.
"We're not sending anybody," said Enrico Deaglio, editor of the Italian weekly magazine Il Diario, whose Iraq correspondent, Enzo Baldoni, was beheaded last August by insurgents who taped his killing. "There's no kind of support from our government or secret services or any kind of organization."
Large organizations like Reuters and the BBC, which have lost cameramen and translators in the war, are expanding their presence for the Iraqi election on Sunday. But they are moving with elaborate security planning, pooling arrangements and, in some cases, the hiring of armed guards and special former military advisers who charge a daily fee of as much as £1,500, or about $2,800.
"We have to see what happens after the election," said Richard Sambrook, director of BBC World Service. "It's perfectly conceivable that we will come to the view that the risk outweighs the value of the journalism we produce and we pull out."
An American television network executive, who declined to be identified, acknowledged that his organization was also struggling with the same debate.
"The question is what happens after the election. Can we get through the elections without any tragedies? There's a high degree of fear."
In France, news organizations have rallied to demand the release of a French journalist apparently kidnapped with her Iraqi translator on Jan. 5. The disappearance of Florence Aubenas, of the leftist daily Libération, and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi came just 16 days after two other French journalists were freed by their Iraqi captors.
The new incident has prompted some television and radio stations to declare their withdrawal from Iraq. RTL radio and Radio France publicly announced a pullout to avoid, as one RTL executive put it, "playing the lottery with the lives of journalists."
On Monday, about 40 executives from France's top media organizations gathered at the offices of Libération to discuss security and a strategy to campaign for the release of missing journalists. During the meeting, newspaper editors from La Croix and Ouest France spoke openly about moving their war correspondents out of Iraq.
Such withdrawals are cheered by the government authorities in Denmark, Italy, Portugal and France, which have urged journalists to stay out of Iraq.
In a speech to France's press corps two days after Aubenas was kidnapped, President Jacques Chirac formally appealed to correspondents to avoid the war zone, saying that their security could "not be guaranteed." The appeal brought a sharp retort from Serge July, Liberation's veteran editor, who wrote the next day that while war coverage was inherently risky, it also provided "indispensable testimony without which our vision of the world would be reduced to official communiqués."
International journalism organizations like Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists, based in Brussels, have also criticized the government warnings.
"We do fully appreciate the safety risks," said Robert Shaw, a human rights officer for the federation. "But at the same time we strongly believe it's not the place of the individual government to be giving advice. It's up to the media to make that decision."
Meanwhile, there is growing recognition that the risks of covering war have greatly increased and that new strategies need to be developed.
The International News Safety Institute, also based in Brussels, was formed in 2003 out of concern about the rising death toll. The group is pressing news organizations to provide more training to journalists to cover war, and it is financing training for Iraqi cameramen this week in advance of the election.
"Why are more journalists dying?" said the institute's director, Rodney Pinder, a former foreign correspondent and news executive for Reuters. "Increasingly, there's been a general loss of neutrality for journalists in conflict. The old days when a reporter could float above the conflict are gone. Journalists are increasingly seen as part of one side or the other. Also, the immediacy of 24-hour satellite news endangers journalists in that the reports they file come back instantly to the people they're reporting about."
Within the last year, an alliance of journalists has formed to seek ways to increase protections via the Geneva conventions and to develop a press emblem for the news media. But even that strategy has provoked debate with many news organizations, which fear that a press emblem would simply create a recognizable target in countries like Iraq.
"We're not huge supporters of the emblem camp," said Barry Moody, Middle East editor for Reuters, which has a permanent team of 40 people in Iraq. "Sometimes if you write 'TV,' it protects you, and sometimes it's the opposite."
Three Reuters journalists have been killed since the start of the war. One died after a U.S. tank shell struck the press headquarters at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, and the other two were shot by American soldiers while filming.
"We had very tough safety measures in place when all these people were killed," Moody said. "Unfortunately in modern warfare, because of the shifting lines, I don't think it's possible to be totally safe."
In the short term, Reporters Without Borders has an insurance program for medical treatment and accidental death. The coverage costs up to €7 a day in most regions, or $9, but the premium for Iraq totals almost €3,000 a month.
It's the human costs that burden Deaglio, the editor of Il Diario. His correspondent Baldoni, 56, was kidnapped last August while driving in a Red Cross convoy. Soon after he was taken hostage, his attackers circulated a videotape warning that unless Italy withdrew its 3,000 troops from Iraq, he would be killed.
"At the paper, we really didn't imagine that this could happen," Deaglio said. "We didn't realize that the situation in Iraq daily life was so much more dangerous."
For the Iraqi election, Deaglio said, the magazine will try to offer insight about Iraq without having a correspondent there. For now, the weekly considers it too dangerous even to send someone to find Baldoni's body.
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