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<font size=3><br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3><b>Hotel journalism
gives American troops a free hand as the press shelters indoors<br><br>
Robert Fisk in Baghdad<br><br>
The Independent, January 17, 2005<br><br>
<a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=601489">http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=601489</a><br><br>
<br><br>
"Hotel journalism" is the only phrase for it. More and more
Western reporters in Baghdad are reporting from their hotels rather than
the streets of Iraq's towns and cities. Some are accompanied everywhere
by hired, heavily armed Western mercenaries. A few live in local offices
from which their editors refuse them permission to leave. Most use Iraqi
stringers, part-time correspondents who risk their lives to conduct
interviews for American or British journalists, and none can contemplate
a journey outside the capital without days of preparation unless they
"embed" themselves with American or British forces.<br><br>
<br><br>
Rarely, if ever, has a war been covered by reporters in so distant and
restricted a way. The New York Times correspondents live in Baghdad
behind a massive stockade with four watchtowers, protected by locally
hired, rifle-toting security men, complete with NYT T‑shirts. America's
NBC television chain are holed up in a hotel with an iron grille over
their door, forbidden by their security advisers to visit the swimming
pool or the restaurant "let alone the rest of Baghdad" lest
they be attacked. Several Western journalists do not leave their rooms
while on station in Baghdad.<br><br>
<br><br>
So grave are the threats to Western journalists that some television
stations are talking of withdrawing their reporters and crews. Amid an
insurgency where Westerners - and many Arabs as well as other foreigners
- are kidnapped and killed, reporting this war is becoming close to
impossible. The murder on videotape of an Italian correspondent, the
cold-blooded killing of one of Poland's top reporters and his Bulgarian
cameraman, and the equally bloody assault on a Japanese reporter on the
notorious Highway 8 south of Baghdad last year have persuaded many
journalists that a large dose of discretion is the better part of
valour.<br><br>
<br><br>
The Independent, along with several British and American papers, still
covers stories in Baghdad in person, moving with hesitation - not to
mention trepidation - through the streets of a city slowly being taken
over by insurgents. Only six months ago, it was still possible to leave
Baghdad in the morning, drive to Mosul or Najaf or other major cities to
cover a story, and return by evening. By August, it was taking me two
weeks to negotiate my dubious safety for a mere 80-mile journey outside
Baghdad.<br><br>
<br><br>
I found the military checkpoints on the motorways deserted, the roads
lined with smashed American trucks and burnt-out police vehicles. Today,
it is almost impossible. Drivers and translators working for newspapers
and television companies are threatened with death. Several have asked to
be relieved of their duties on 30 January lest they be recognised on the
streets during Iraq's elections. In the brutal 1990s war in Algeria, at
least 42 local reporters were murdered and a French cameraman was shot
dead in the Algiers Casbah. But the Algerian security forces could still
give a minimum of protection to reporters. In Iraq, they cannot even
protect themselves.<br><br>
<br><br>
The police and the Iraqi National Guard - much trumpeted by the Americans
as the men who will take over after an American withdrawal - are heavily
infiltrated by insurgents. Checkpoints may be manned by policemen, but it
is now unclear just who the cops are working for. US troops operating in
and around Baghdad are now avoided by Western journalists, unless they
are "embedded", as much as they are by Iraqis because of the
indiscipline with which they open fire on civilians on the least
suspicion.<br><br>
<br><br>
So questions are being asked. What is a reporter's life worth? Is the
story worth the risk? And, much more seriously from an ethical point of
view, why do not more journalists report on the restrictions under which
they operate? During the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, editors often
insisted on prefacing journalists' dispatches from Saddam's Iraq by
talking about the restrictions under which they were operating. But
today, when our movements are much more circumscribed, no such
"health warning" accompanies their reports. In many cases,
viewers and readers are left with the impression that the journalist is
free to travel around Iraq to check out the stories which he or she
confidently files each day. Not so.<br><br>
<br><br>
"The United States military couldn't be happier with this
situation," a long-time American correspondent in Baghdad says.
"They know that if they bomb a house of innocent people, they can
claim it was a 'terrorist' base and get away with it. They don't want us
roaming around Iraq and so the 'terrorist' threat is great news for
them.<br><br>
<br><br>
"They can claim they've shot 600 or 1,000 insurgents and we have no
way of checking because we can't go to the cemetery or visit the
hospitals because we don't want to get kidnapped and have our throats
cut."<br><br>
<br><br>
Thus, many reporters are now reduced to telephoning the American military
or the Iraqi "interim" government for information from their
hotel rooms, receiving "facts" from men and women who are even
more isolated from Iraq in the Baghdad Green Zone around Saddam Hussein's
former republican palace than are the journalists. Or they take reports
from their correspondents who are embedded with American troops and who
will, necessarily, get only the American side of the story.<br><br>
<br><br>
Yes, it is still possible to report from the street in Baghdad. But fewer
and fewer of us are doing this, and there may come a time when we have to
balance the worth of our reports against the risk to our lives.<br><br>
<br><br>
We have not reached that point yet. So far, we still see a little more of
Iraq than the people who claim to be running this country. <br>
</b></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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