They shoot journalists, don’t they?

Since the Anglo-American “coalition” launched its attack on Iraq on March 19, a dozen journalists have been killed while covering the conflict. The media sustained their heaviest losses on Tuesday. On Day 20 of the war it was the US military that inflicted all of the media casualties.




Cameraman Tarek Ayoub, a Jordanian working for al-Jazeera satellite television network, was killed when an American missile slammed into the Arabic-language channel’s office in Baghdad.




Two other cameramen -- Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian who worked for the British-owned Reuters news agency, and Jose Couso of Spain’s Telecinco -- were killed when an American M1A1 Abrams tank opened fire on the Palestine Hotel where most foreign journalists still working in Baghdad are billeted.




Several other journalists were wounded in the attacks on the Palestine Hotel and those on the offices of Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, another Arabic-language network.




Aside from Ayoub, Protsyuk and Couso, the media fatalities of Gulf War II include Christian Liebig (Focus, Germany), Julio Anguita Parrado (El Mundo, Spain), David Bloom (NBC, US), Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed (BBC, UK), Michael Kelly (The Washington Post, US), Kaveh Golestan (BBC, UK), Gaby Rado (ITN, UK) and Paul Moran (ABC, Australia).

While expressing regret for Tuesday’s media casualties, US military officials insisted that their forces were not targeting journalists.




That may be so; still, the attacks on buildings known to house media personnel have given rise to doubts about the US military’s real attitude toward news organizations such as Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV and others, such as Reuters, that took pains to cover both sides of the war.




In the case of the Palestine Hotel incident, US military spokesmen claimed that the American tank had come under small-arms fire originating from the hotel. However, eyewitnesses said that before the shelling, they heard and saw no gunfire directed at the tank. BBC reporter Ragge Omaar added that the tank had aimed its cannon at the hotel for about 20 minutes before actually firing.




“We regret to inform you that our cameraman and correspondent Tarek Ayoub was killed [Tuesday] morning during the US missile strike on our Baghdad office,” Jazeera said in a statement. “He is a martyr.”




A “crime” was how Majed Abdel Hadi, one of the network’s Baghdad correspondents, described the US missile attack and Ayoub’s death a crime.




“I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict,” Hadi was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. “We were targeted because the Americans don’t want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people.”




Jazeera is the most widely watched network in the Middle East. American and British officials have slammed it for broadcasting footage of dead “coalition” troops and prisoners of war.




Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV are the only two international networks with their own offices in Baghdad.




All the other media organizations that still have a presence in the Iraqi capital used to operate from a press center at the Iraqi Information Ministry. However, they moved to the Palestine Hotel after the ministry was bombed.




According to Reuters, Abu Dhabi TV had earlier shown footage of a fire blazing from the Jazeera office. Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Alouni, who covered the US-led war on Afghanistan, was seen carrying the wounded Ayoub into a car.




“One missile hit the pavement in front of us, ripping out windows and doors, and then one hit the generator,” Maher Abdullah, another Jazeera correspondent, was quoted as saying. “The office is now on fire.”




The eight-year-old Jazeera, based in the Qatari capital of Doha, got its start courtesy of no less than the Emir of Qatar, a staunch US ally. (Doha is where the Anglo-American central command is headquartered.) The potentate provided the initial capital but -- network officials were quoted as saying -- has not influenced editorial direction.




Like other independent news organizations, Jazeera subsists on advertising, selling video clips to other networks and other news-based businesses. It reaches 35 million viewers in the Middle East, eight million in Europe and three million in the United States. Since US and British forces launched their attack on Iraq on March 19, its viewership has grown even larger.




Competition for Jazeera comes from two smaller Arabic-language networks, the Dubai-based al-Arabiya and Abu Dhabi TV in the United Arab Emirates.

Emily Nelson, writing for The Wall Street Journal, noted in a recent article: “Often called the Arab CNN, al-Jazeera regards itself as the first independent Arab TV station, the only one that is ever critical of Arab governments. It has changed the media landscape in the Arab world since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when most Middle Eastern media were state-controlled and many regional viewers were skeptical of what they saw. Now the ‘al-Jazeera effect’ resembles ‘the CNN effect’ that came into sharp relief in 1991, when seeing images of the war on TV shaped public opinion.”




Jazeera has developed a reputation for in-your-face, no-holds-barred coverage, earning for itself a huge following among Arabs who for decades have had to content themselves with Western news feeds and bland, heavily censored broadcasts from domestic networks that were either state-owned or controlled by interests linked to ruling parties.




Jazeera practices media freedom to an extent and enthusiasm that rivals and sometimes surpasses its American and British counterparts. Still, many Western observers -- including US network sourpusses -- dismiss the network as biased, its coverage ideologically tainted. As if the coverage of networks like Fox TV were not.




Outside the Middle East, Jazeera became prominent when it broadcast comments attributed to Osama bin Laden in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. It was the only network to do so.




In the current Iraq conflict, certain American and British officials have claimed that, in exchange for exclusive footage, Jazeera has been partial to the regime of President Saddam Hussein. The same officials ignored the fact that a couple of Jazeera correspondents have been expelled from Iraq by the Saddam regime.




Despite Western suspicions that Jazeera is partisan, the network has earned a respected place in the global media community. Its bloody initiation in Baghdad has certified its credentials in the international brotherhood of independent journalists.




Hours after the killing and wounding of news crews in Baghdad, the pressure group Reporters Without Borders called for an immediate investigation into the apparent targeting of journalists by US forces. The International Federation of Journalists, which has hundreds of thousands of members worldwide, also called for an inquiry and, in addition, condemned both sides of the conflict.




Intentional or not, the killing of journalists by US forces has made all the more difficult America’s stated objective of winning the peace in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. The apparent targeting of the Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV journalists, in particular, can only reinforce Arab suspicions about US intentions in and for the region.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Opinion&oid=20303