Messenger in a Bottle

Is the US military targeting journalists in Iraq?

BY ALEXANDER ZEVIN

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Illustration by Hilary Falb
Iraq Reporter

IT IS NOT DANGEROUS to work for the College Hill Independent. For journalists working in Iraq things are not so smooth: life there means a daily face-off with death. So far, more than 70 journalists have lost their lives. The vast majority of these deaths-approximately 40-have come at the hands of the Iraqi insurgency. It is increasingly clear, however, that reporters and their crews have reason to fear US troops: according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 12 deaths in the last 23 months were the result of US military fire.

Whether journalists killed by US troops can be said to have died from "friendly fire" is a question of hot debate. The head of CNN's news division for 23 years, Eason Jordan, recently resigned over the issue. Jordan allegedly made comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, held at the end of January, suggesting that the US military had deliberately targeted journalists. Though no known transcript of the event exists, right wing bloggers and websites like www.easongate.com whipped themselves into a collective frenzy and quickly called for his resignation.

Suppose Jordan did say something about journalists being shot at and killed by US troops. Is he, substantively speaking, wrong? The fact that journalists are dying in relatively large numbers (compared to the first Gulf War, for instance) in Iraq is beyond dispute. In The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Joel Campagna of the Committee to Protect Journalists argues that while there is no evidence that the US has deliberately targeted the press in Iraq, "the record does show that US forces do not take adequate precautions to ensure that journalists can work safely." And when journalists are killed, the military often seems "unwilling to launch an adequate investigation." The International Federation of Journalists has gone further, saying that the US is in a "culture of denial" over the deaths.

Whack A Reporter?

On April 8 2003, during the invasion of Baghdad, a US tank fired into the Palestine Hotel, killing two journalists and wounding three others in the fifteenth floor Reuters office. As David Zucchino, an embedded correspondent for the LA Times, notes in his book Thunder Run, senior military staff knew that the Palestine was full of international journalists. For some still unexplained reason, commanders on the ground did not. Earlier the same day, a US warplane fired a missile at Al Jazeera's Baghdad offices even though the Arab news organization had informed the US of its location weeks before. Tareq Ayyoub, reporting live from the roof on a battle raging along the Tigris, was killed in the air attack. Bombing Al Jazeera is something of a habit for the military, which also smashed up its Kabul station in 2003.

Individual journalists, un-embedded and in the street, are particularly vulnerable. Reuters Cameraman Mazen Dana was shot dead as he filmed a US tank approaching Abu Ghraib prison. The US military labeled this incident "justified" because, according to Campagna, the soldier who fired said he "saw a male wearing a black shirt and pants" with "a dark shirt and dark skin" and mistook his camera for a rocket launcher. As Jeremy Scahill of The Nation points out, "The US has yet to discipline a single soldier for the killing of a journalist in Iraq."

Not surprisingly, alleged mistreatment ranks even lower on the discipline to-do list. At least two Al Jazeera journalists for Al Jazeera, Salah Hassan and Suheib Badr Darwish, were imprisoned and claim to have been tortured at Abu Ghraib in November of 2003. Their stories are given greater weight by the claims of three Reuters employees who say that, while covering the downing of a US helicopter in January 2004, they were detained and sexually abused by US troops. Two of the three, according to Reuters, said that they were "forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it." All three say they "were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs." Military investigators, who absolved the troops, did not bother to interview the detained Reuters employees.

Measuring Intent

Even if the US military is not specifically targeting or aiming to intimidate journalists, the effect of US actions may, in principle, do just this. What most of the above deaths have in common is that those killed were not among embedded reporters traveling and bunking with US troops. In response to the bombing of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, in which over 100 international journalists were reporting and living, the spokesperson for the Pentagon warned non-embedded reporters that Iraq "is not a safe place. You should not be here." This message has become quite clear to press organizations around the world. "We have had three deaths, and they were all non-embedded, non-coalition nationals and they were all at the hands of the US military, and the reaction of the US authorities in each case was that they were somehow justified," David Schlesinger, Reuters's global managing editor, said in November 2004. "What is the US's position on non-embeds? Are non-embedded journalists fair game?" Nik Gowing, a top news anchor for the BBC, was less Socratic about it: "The trouble is that a lot of the military-particularly the American...military-do not want us there. And they make it very uncomfortable for us to work. And I think that this...is leading to security forces in some instances feeling it is legitimate to target us with deadly force and with impunity."

What are the risks, if not of targeting then of accepting rather nonchalantly as a byproduct of war, the deaths of international and freelance journalists? According to Phillip Knightley, author of The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth-Maker, Pentagon planners in charge of the war see only the benefits. Disregard for nonembedded reporters, said Knightley at a recent conference at Berkeley, reflects the military's interest in controlling the view the public has of the battlefield. What is usually a closely fought struggle of perception has become, as a result of the embedded reporters in Iraq, a "clear-cut victory" of perception for the US military.

Get The Il-Manifest-Out

But it appears that the US's "clear-cut victory" in the battle over battlefield reporting may be taking a toll on US military interests. On March 4, Guiliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist held hostage by insurgents in Iraq, was shot at by US troops just after being freed from a month-long captivity. The US military claimed that the car carrying Sgrena was speeding past check-points as it approached the airport and that soldiers tried to signal the car to stop. Only afterwards, it said in a statement, did troops fire into the car's engine. Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent, was killed while trying to shield Sgrena from bullets. Shrapnel hit Sgrena in the shoulder.

Sgrena, upon returning to Rome in a wheel chair on Sunday, took issue with the American characterization of events. "There was no bright light, no signal," she told La 7 television news, adding that the car was traveling at regular speed. The Italian news agency ANSA quotes Ms. Sgrena telling a friend, "The most difficult moment was when I saw the person who had saved me die in my arms." This person, Nicola Calipari, lies in state at the Vittoriano in Rome where hundreds of Italians have come to pay their respects.

Influential leftist newspapers, and even members of the center-left government, reacted harshly to the shooting. La Stampa, a Roman daily, warned on March 6, "the incident could have very serious political consequences" for Italian participation in what President Bush has called the "coalition of the willing."

Some politicians expressed concern that support for keeping troops in Iraq, an already overwhelmingly unpopular war in Italy, will be further undermined. In an indication of the political stakes, even Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of President Bush's strongest allies in Europe, demanded that the United States explain its actions and investigate the incident.

As for Sgrena, she added fuel to the fire the other day, telling Sky TG24 News, "the fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known.that they do everything to prevent this practice to save the lives of people held hostage.So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been targeted."

In letting such an accusation fly, Sgrena underscores a problem with the question of whether the US is targeting journalists in Iraq: in some sense, it doesn't matter. Journalists keep dying, along with many more civilians crossing US checkpoints, without so much as cursory investigations. This sends a message not just to the messenger (beware) but, as it turns out, to the international community and most importantly to US allies. What seems like an acceptable cost of war may actually prove damaging to the United States' goal of occupying and pacifying Iraq.

Alexander Zevin B'06 is punning in a bottle

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