Thread: Killing The Messenger

I am pretty appalled by the performance of our corporate media in general.
It's coverage of the Iraqi Invasion & Occupation in particular is substandard to say the least. Most so called Journalists cower behind the walls of the Green Zone in Baghdad, and what you read comes off US Army Press Corps briefings. Some news.
The relatively few that do venture out generally fly somewhere, do a brief report, then fly back. They are flown by the US Army or Air Force (or the Brit's), to where the Army wants them to go. They see what they are allowed to see.

One of the major derelictions of duty however is the lack of reporting and scrutiny of how many reporters and cameramen have been killed, seriously injured, incarcerated or roughed up during this conflict. The article below summarises a few of them- there are more, and I invite you to add other examples.

Corporate media sucks.

"Trouble came early on April 8, 2003. At 7:45 a.m., Tareq Ayyoub, chief Baghdad correspondent for the Arab news service Al-Jazeera, was standing on the roof of the network's Baghdad bureau, intently narrating a pitched battle between Iraqi troops and two American tanks that had earlier appeared on the nearby Al-Jurnhuriya Bridge. Ayyoub's cameraman, an Iraqi named Zuheir, was panning back and forth from the battle to the reporter for the accompanying shots.

Suddenly, the sound of gunfire was drowned out. An American fighter jet came swooping in low across the city. Ayyoub and Zuheir instinctively looked up and saw the jet bank its wing and head straight for where they were standing. "The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof-that's how close it was," recounted Ayyoub's colleague, Maher Abdullah, to Robert Fisk of the London Independent.'

Inside the bureau, Ayyoub's other colleagues could hear the rocket launch from the plane. There was a high-pitched whine, followed by the thunderous roar of an explosion. "It was a direct hit-the missile actually exploded against our electrical generator," Abdullah recalled. Colleagues frantically scooped up the shattered body of 35-year-old Ayyoub and carried him out in a blanket to an ambulance. But it was too late. "Tareq died almost at once," said Abdullah. The cameraman was injured, but survived.

Moments later and less than a mile away, the journalists and staff of Abu Dhabi Television-which is written in large blue letters on the roof of their building-took cover in their offices. They had just heard that the United States had bombed Al-Jazeera. Twenty-five staff members huddled in the basement, phoning and pleading over the air for someone to help save them. Again, their pleas fell on deaf ears. U.S. soldiers battered their offices with artillery. Miraculously, there were no serious injuries.

Just before noon, it was the turn of the international press corps. At the Palestine Hotel, where a hundred unembedded reporters were staying, many watched in horror as a U.S. tank positioned on the Al-Jumhuriya Bridge slowly rotated its gun in their direction. A French television crew filmed the armored behemoth as it took aim and suddenly, with no warning, unleashed a round into the side of the towering hotel. The bomb struck the fifteenth floor, making a direct hit on the room serving as a bureau for Reuters, the international news agency. A veteran Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters, Taras Protsyuk, 35, was killed instantly. Jose Couso, 37, a cameraman for Telecinco Spanish television, who was filming one floor below, was also killed. Three other international journalists were seriously injured .

That afternoon, as the news began to buzz across international datelines, spokesmen at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar offered justifications. They claimed the tank had been responding to "significant enemy fire from the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad."' A parade of military spokespeople repeated this claim, saying it was the fault of Iraqi forces that had been attacking from civilian locations such as the Palestine.

American networks chimed right in. Speaking on Larry King Live that night, CNN military commentator General Wesley Clark assured viewers, "It's a case of a very unfortunate accident of war. People were in the wrong place at the wrong time.... You can't tell the troops that they can't shoot back when they're being shot at.... The United States wouldn't deliberately kill journalists .

Wrong place, wrong time-in their offices?

The foreign media treated these incidents very differently than their American colleagues. "We can only conclude that the U.S. Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists," declared the international press watch group Reporters Without Borders. Robert Fisk of the London Independent was even more blunt, declaring that the attacks "look very much like murder." After all, the U.S. military was well aware that reporters were working from the Palestine Hotel. And in an interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Obseruateur, the unit's tank commander made no mention of hostile fire from Iraqi civilians in the area of the hotel.'

Journalists who saw the attacks scoffed at the claim that gunfire had come either from the hotel or from Al-Jazeera's offices. Besides, they asked, if people had been shooting from the streets, why had the tank targeted the fifteenth floor? Al-Jazeera noted that on February 24, it had delivered a letter to Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke giving precise coordinates for its bureau.

It might have been the Arab news service's biggest mistake.

Victoria Clarke was unmoved by the evidence. "Our forces came under fire," the Pentagon flack insisted. The American troops simply "exercised their inherent right to self-defense.... Baghdad is not a safe place, you should not be there."

That explanation confirmed what many journalists feared: Rather than ensure this would never happen again, the Pentagon was using the journalists' deaths as a pretext to warn other reporters-those who were not embedded with the U.S. military to leave the battlefield.

'We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people," said Al-Jazeera Baghdad reporter Majed Abdel Hadi. David Chater, Baghdad correspondent for Sky News in Britain, wondered aloud whether unembedded journalists would be able to continue reporting from Iraq. "How are we going to continue to do this," he asked, "if American tanks are targeting US?

That may be exactly the message the Pentagon wanted to send."

Link- Killing the Messenger, Sanitized excerpted from the book The Exception to the Rulers Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them by Amy Goodman with David Goodman

The excerpt is from a book:
The Exception to the Rulers

by Amy Goodman with David Goodman

Bump-
On August 17, 2003, Mazen Dana, a Palestinian cameraman for Reuters, was killed while filming at a prison outside Baghdad. He had just spoken with American soldiers, making them aware of what he was doing. It didn't matter. Dana ended up filming his own death. As his camera trained on a U.S. tank fifty meters away, the soldiers suddenly opened fire. Dana's camera went out of focus as a highcaliber machine gun bullet tore into his chest.
This time, the explanations were even flimsier than on April 8. U.S. soldiers claimed they mistook Dana's camera for a rocketpropelled grenade launcher. The Pentagon said the soldiers had accidentally "engaged a cameraman." U.S. officials told the Committee to Protect Journalists that Dana's killing was "regrettable," but that the soldiers "acted within the rules of engagement."
It was grimly ironic that Mazen Dana had been awarded the International Press Freedom Award just two years earlier by the Committee to Protect journalists (CPJ)-for his determination to keep filming in volatile situations. He had been arrested and wounded many times while covering the conflict in the Israeli Occupied Territories. "Mazen was one of the finest conflict cameramen of his generation, enduring bullets and physical violence to report the news," wrote Joel Campagna of CPJ.' Thousands marched in Hebron at his funeral, and testimonials poured in from around the world.

Same link as above Post.

Media deaths in Iraq reach 127



Stephen Brook, press correspondent
Tuesday May 30, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
The killing of two British journalists working for the US television network CBS in Iraq brought the total of media staff killed in the conflict since 2003 to 127, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
The IFJ said that the deaths of 22 media workers so far this year had made independent reporting in the country "almost impossible".
"These new deaths are tragedies that affect all media people and add to the atmosphere of terror surrounding the work of media that makes independent news coverage of the country almost impossible," said Aidan White, the IFJ general secretary.
British television journalists Paul Douglas, 48, a cameraman for CBS News and soundman James Brolan, 42, died yesterday when the US military unit they were embedded with was hit by a bomb in Baghdad. CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, aged 39, was seriously injured in the attack.
Mr White said that the killings reinforced the concern that there is no safe place for media covering the conflict.
"This was a tragic example of how journalists embedded with occupation forces face the same perilous conditions that have affected many local reporters," he said. "Our thoughts are with the friends and families of the victims and we must redouble our efforts to try to keep journalists out of the firing line." Two weeks ago, six Iraqi media staff were killed in a six-day period, creating what the IFJ described as an "unprecedented atmosphere of terror and intimidation" for journalists throughout the country.

Media deaths in Iraq reach 127 | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited

The silence is deafening But these two were not killed by the 'Merkins.

Terry Lloyd however was, whilst lying wounded in a makeshift ambulance travelling away from US forces.

February 11, 2007


Twelve soldiers named in Terry Lloyd killing



Robert Booth, Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Michael Smith

BRITAIN faces a diplomatic row over its failure to bring to justice the American troops who “unlawfully killed” ITN journalist Terry Lloyd in the Iraq war.

Despite the refusal of American and British officials to identify the US marines, lawyers and investigators acting for his family have uncovered the names.
They are to be handed to Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, in an attempt to force him to bring criminal proceedings.
The move follows an inquest last October that ruled Lloyd had been unlawfully killed in March 2003 when he was shot in the head while being evacuated near Basra in a makeshift ambulance.
Despite a three-year campaign by ITN and Lloyd’s family, the troops did not give evidence at the inquest and have never been named. It has also emerged that Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary, failed to disclose British troops were key witnesses.
The family’s action comes amid claims the government has effectively colluded with Washington in failing to reveal the full facts of “friendly fire” incidents.
It was claimed last week the Ministry of Defence had conspired with American forces to conceal the truth over the death of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull after leaked footage from a cockpit video revealed a catalogue of blunders.
Sources close to Lloyd’s family confirmed this weekend that the dozen soldiers in the US unit involved — Red Platoon, which is part of Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Marine Division — have all been identified.
Delta was headed during the invasion by Captain Greg Poland. He is not believed to have witnessed the incident, but has said his men thought they were possibly under attack from suicide bombers.
Hussein Osman, Lloyd’s Lebanese interpreter, was also killed, while Frederic Nerac, a French cameraman, is also presumed dead, although his remains have never been found.
This weekend, David Mannion, the editor-in-chief of ITV News, said: “At least one member of that platoon fired into the back of a makeshift ambulance in which Terry was lying badly injured, but alive.
“This van was moving away from the battle space and was clearly of no threat. The bullet that killed him was an American bullet fired by a member of Red Platoon. The coroner regarded that as unlawful killing.
“The Lloyd family are not seeking vengeance, they are simply seeking to find out what happened, and if there is case for someone to be brought before the justice system, then that should happen.”
It is understood that Louis Charalambous, the lawyer acting for Lloyd’s widow Lynn, is to pass the names of those involved to the British authorities.
On the morning of March 22 2003, a few days after the American invasion of Iraq had begun, Lloyd set off towards Basra with Osman and his two cameramen, Nerac and Daniel Demoustier. Riding in two Mitsubishi Pajero SUVs with “TV” written on the hood and door in black tape, the ITN crew was hoping for an exclusive on the Iraqi army surrendering at Basra.
As the vehicles approached the city, Lloyd realised some Iraqi forces had not yet given up. Soldiers were posted on a bridge and others were in pickups.
Lloyd’s vehicle made a U-turn, but was caught between a line of American M1 Abrams tanks and the Iraqi forces. There was little chance of escape as both sides opened fire. Lloyd was hit by Iraqi gunfire.
Demoustier, now based in Belgium, said last week: “We heard firing and my front windshield was shattered. I ducked down beneath my steering wheel and when I looked up a few seconds later I saw the whole dashboard torn up and bullets flying through the car.
“Terry was already out of the car. My whole roof was on fire because the petrol I kept on the roof was burning. I ended up in the desert between the tanks and the Iraqi vehicle that was now burning.
“I could hear the tanks and lots of noise from the other side where there were wounded crying and shouting. That is where Terry probably lay, wounded. A Red Cross ambulance arrived and took away wounded. But every time I tried to move, the tanks fired again at me. It went on for more than half an hour.”
ITN executives did not dispute the Americans were within their rights to open fire in the initial exchanges. There was, however, fury that they then fired on the “ambulance” carrying Lloyd.
It is now known four British special services soldiers witnessed what happened. Their existence was initially kept quiet by the MoD.
Stewart Purvis, former chief executive of ITN, said that he wrote to Hoon asking for any relevant information. Hoon wrote back, but never told him about the British soldiers.
When the MoD was asked if any of its soldiers were in the area, it said it had provided all available information. “They never mentioned the British military presence,” said Purvis.
As ministers faced questions in parliament about the attack, the MoD agreed to ask the military police to conduct an inquiry.
It was the military investigators who established a key witness was a member of the British special forces, who later gave evidence at Lloyd’s inquest.
After Andrew Walker, the Oxfordshire assistant deputy coroner, ruled that Lloyd had been unlawfully killed, his widow said those responsible should be brought to justice. “This was not a friendly fire incident . . . it was a despicable, deliberate, vengeful act,” she said.
Walker has written to Goldsmith and Sir Ken Macdonald, the director of public prosecutions, recommending a criminal inquiry. He described US military statements on the killings as “self serving” and “unsatisfactory”.
Johan Van der Vyver, professor of international law at Emory University, Atlanta, said America was not a signatory to the International Criminal Court so it would not be possible for the UK to pursue a case under the Geneva conventions or humanitarian law. He said the British could investigate the possibility of extradition proceedings but the most likely prospect would be to urge the Americans to reopen their own investigation.
The Crown Prosecution Service is studying the case files. Goldsmith will make a final decision on any legal action. A Pentagon spokesman said an investigation into the incident was completed in May 2003 and concluded that US forces followed “applicable rules of engagement”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1364707.ece

Originally Posted by sabang

He described US military statements on the killings as “self serving” and “unsatisfactory”.
Johan Van der Vyver, professor of international law at Emory University, Atlanta, said America was not a signatory to the International Criminal Court so it would not be possible for the UK to pursue a case under the Geneva conventions or humanitarian law.

There you go...