Ed.&Publisher:US Reporters Unable to Probe Killings in Fallujah

[DeepModem Mom]

Thanks to happyending, who posted in GD --


U.S. Reporters Unable to Probe Killings in Fallujah

By E&P Staff

Published: April 15, 2004 10:25 AM EST

NEW YORK Normally, when charges of high civilian casualties in war emerge -- as they have this week in Iraq -- independent reporters attempt to arrive on the scene for a full assessment. But with kidnappings and other threats to the security of journalists rising in Iraq, those kinds of eyewitness probes, at least from Western reporters, may be few and far between.

This has already had dire consequences, with the truth in hot dispute, as the U.S. military denies wrongdoing in the siege of Fallujah while Arab television and other press accounts document an estimated 600 dead in that city and 1,200 wounded, many of them women and children.

The accusations of mass killings in Fallujah, and on a smaller scale in other cities in the past week, have led some Iraqi Governing Council members to criticize the U.S. military and threaten to resign. It has also fed rising anti-American anger in the country. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both expressed concerns about the civilian toll....

***

Paul Slavin, a senior vice president of ABC News, told (WSJ reporter Julia) Angwin the situation was "out of control. If it does stay out of control, we will have a huge problem in how we cover this story." Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said his reporters in Baghdad had been asked to stay within city limits and admitted to Angwin, "I think you have to ask yourself periodically, 'Is it safe to be there at all?'"...


http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000487569

[anarchy1999]

1. Is it safe to be there at all? Hmmm.......

Maybe they should try reading the blogs from the aid workers, or they might even try contacting Rahul Mahajan. He is an author, journalist, educator............ he was there last Sunday. Maybe we ALL need to start faxing and calling all these VP's and Editors, again! Links can be found in the activism thread, Calimary put them up yesterday.

[symbolman]

2. not to mention

that OUR TROOPS shoot journalists..

they've threatened them repeatedly, they bombed the hotel full of Press right before the toppling of the Saddam statue..

result, no one was there to report on the fact that NO ONE WAS THERE - unless you count Chalabais troops masquerading as Iraq civilians..

Where are the IMBEDDED press?

[daleo]

3. How conveeenient

With the kidnappings, they have an excuse not to do any reporting. Up until then, they didn't bother anyway, unless you call embeds reporters. I imagine the people of Fallujah would accept (and protect) a few western embeds if it got their story out, accurately and objectively.

[anarchy1999]

4. Kicking up for late afternoon, early evening crowd.

TAKE ACTION!

[calimary]

5. What you said, anarchy! HERE'S HOW:

Please note, here, The World's Greatest Lists of Media Contacts – updated April 14, 2004 – in the following thread:

LINK:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1413842#

IF THEY THINK WE DON’T CARE, THEY WON’T, EITHER!

[anarchy1999]

6. kicking up for the late night owls................

n/t
Pleae help us take action. It is the only way we will ever effect (sp?/pesky synonym) change.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Really good article, but tough to accept!

From DeepModem Mom's article:

Francis Harris, deputy news editor at London's Daily Telegraph, was quoted yesterday as warning, "If it becomes too dangerous you end up with journalists locked up in secure zones interviewing each other and relying on the authorities for information."

On Wednesday, Christine Hauser of The New York Times covered the carnage in Fallujah, but from a hospital in Baghdad, where some of the victims had been taken. Writing from Fallujah, her colleague Jeffrey Gettleman noted that the Marines in that city "have orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not."

A lance corporal told Gettleman he had seen an American helicopter fire a missile at a man with a slingshot. "Crazy, huh?" the soldier said.
(snip/)

This isn't what we ever expected to be reading in the "New Millenium," is it?

[anarchy1999]

8. I'm not sure what is tough to accept? That they can't report?

Help me out here? I'm confused.

Rahul Mahajan at www.empirenotes.org

Jo Wilding at www.wildfirejo.org.uk and

Dahr Jamail at www.newstandardnews.net

Also Robert Fisk.

Don't miss Stan Goff either!

April 13, 2004

A Rant
The Bridge
By STAN GOFF

WARNING: This commentary may cause anxiety.

The United States government has initiated a chain reaction that it can no longer control. The stalled vengeance assault on Fallujah is merely a symptom. So is the uprising triggered by the US closure of a Shia newspaper in Sadr City, Baghdad, followed by gunning down the demonstrators who protested (Ah, yes, we don’t even hear about that when they talk about the latest demon, Muqtada al-Sadr… Memory is so short.).

The chain reaction is far broader and deeper than the battlefield fiasco in Iraq right now. Once brown people start to pick up guns, other brown people follow suit. The myth of invincibility of the United States military -- called into question even before the Bush Doctrine arrived at this particular Iraqi cul-de-sac -- is shattered. No one is shocked. No one is awed.
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff04132004.html