Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Deaths of Journalists Bring Accusations and Concerns
Yesterday's deaths galvanized advocacy groups in ways not seen so far in the war. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit group that monitors the welfare of journalists worldwide, called on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to investigate American strikes on the Baghdad bureau of Al Jazeera television and the Palestine Hotel, a base for foreign journalists.

Another advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, said it was appalled at yesterday's attacks. "U.S. forces must prove that the incident was not a deliberate attack to dissuade or prevent journalists from continuing to report on what is happening in Baghdad," the group's secretary general, Robert Menard, said in a statement.

The news organizations whose staff members were killed yesterday took a more moderate tone.

"Clearly the war, and all its confusion, has come to the heart of Baghdad," Geert Linnebank, the editor in chief of Reuters, said in a statement. "But the incident raises questions about the judgment of the advancing U.S. troops, who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists."

Al Jazeera's chairman, Sheik Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani, said in Qatar that he was withholding judgment on whether the attack was accidental or deliberate. But network staff members in Washington; Amman, Jordan; and Doha, Qatar, said they were convinced that the attack was premeditated.

"The feeling basically is they want to do something really ugly in Baghdad, and they don't want any Arab TV there, and they're just reinforcing it," said Imad Musa, a Jazeera producer in Washington.

The Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera's Arabic-language competitor, Abu Dhabi TV, were also struck yesterday by American fire.

Officials at United States Central Command in Qatar said initially that American troops had fired on Al Jazeera's offices after coming under "significant enemy fire from the building." Military officials said allied troops had no choice but to respond to fire from the Jazeera office building and the Palestine Hotel. Later in a news briefing, officials said the precise source of the fire could not be pinpointed. Journalists at both buildings disputed accounts of fire from their buildings.

The attacks, particularly the strike on Al Jazeera's offices, were a setback for the United States-led public relations campaign to convince the Arab world that the fight to remove Saddam Hussein was not an effort to occupy Iraq. Jazeera correspondents, who are estimated to reach up to 45 million people, told their viewers that they believed they were deliberately attacked.

Dima Tahboub, wife of Tariq Ayoub, 34, the Jazeera reporter who was killed, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse, "My prayer for Tariq is that his blood be a curse for those who help the Americans, the Jews and the English to strike our families in Iraq and Palestine."

Pentagon officials reiterated yesterday their warnings that journalists not traveling with troops were taking serious risks by remaining in Baghdad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09MEDI.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

con·cept