Bad day for Journalists

This came in today from the Kur­dis­tan Jour­nal­ists’ Union while I was tak­ing care of last minute logis­tics before head­ing out toward Kalek and/or Kirkuk. (Sorry for the light last few days… I’ve been get­ting my legs under me, so to speak.)

Kur­dis­tan Jour­nal­ists’ Union’s State­ment on the way Ara­bic Media chan­nels deal with Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom
While Iraq is wit­ness­ing a deci­sive war to lib­er­ate it from 35 long years under the Iraqi Ba’athist Regime’s repres­sive rule, the world Mass Media cor­re­spon­dents and jour­nal­ists are now con­tin­u­ously report­ing the events of Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom using the lat­est tech­nol­ogy invented in the field of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This coali­tion oper­a­tion is extremely impor­tant, not only for the lives of the Iraqi peo­ples, but also for the whole Region and the world, as it will also impacts [sic] many polit­i­cal equi­ties. [sic]
At the same time, and as events are unfold­ing, we empha­size on the impor­tance and effect of jour­nal­ism on today’s world. And while free Media activ­i­ties are restricted in the areas con­trolled by the Iraqi regime, we find that Iraqi Kur­dis­tan Region is main­tain­ing a real democ­racy for 12 years that paved the way for jour­nal­ists, rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent media chan­nels in the entire world, to report as freely as they like ben­e­fit­ing from the atmos­phere of free­dom in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan.
We believe that the regional Media Chan­nels in gen­eral and Ara­bic ones in par­tic­u­lar, have the right to report on the events from their own point of view and prac­tice their rights as jour­nal­ists; since the free­doms of knowl­edge and report­ing news are a part of the gen­eral free­doms. But unfor­tu­nately, some Ara­bic Media Chan­nels, espe­cially the Satel­lite Tele­vi­sions are try­ing to play down and degrade the Iraqi people’s demands and wishes of free­dom and democ­racy. They still turn a blind eye on over 35 years of iso­la­tion, repres­sion, suf­fer­ing and the dreams of Iraqi peo­ples in their cov­er­age of news and events.
These Ara­bic Satel­lite chan­nels have used a bias lan­guage in por­tray­ing the facts they reported about the suf­fer­ing of the Iraqi peo­ple. They not only became a mouth­piece for the dem­a­gogic poli­cies of that dying fas­cist regime, but they started to use cov­ers of Islam and Ara­bism in spread­ing the regime’s pro­pa­ganda. They exceeded the rules of true jour­nal­ism, trod on all the prin­ci­ples of free­dom, democ­racy and human rights and became a tool in the hands of Sad­dam Hus­sein.
We as Kur­dis­tan jour­nal­ists con­sider the Ara­bic Mass Media as a party that stands against the process of Lib­er­at­ing Iraq from dic­ta­tor­ship; there­fore, Kur­dis­tan jour­nal­ists and all the free­dom and democ­racy seek­ers of all Iraq, includ­ing all its eth­nic groups and reli­gions, strong con­demn this neg­a­tive pro­pa­ganda that is released by the Ara­bic Satel­lite Tele­vi­sions.
[Empha­sis added — Chris]
Fur­ther­more, the Kur­dis­tan Jour­nal­ists Union strongly rejects such address [sic] that these Ara­bic Satel­lite Tele­vi­sions are using in describ­ing the cur­rent gen­eral and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan Region in par­tic­u­lar, and those of Iraq in gen­eral, and we con­sider their address as a defama­tion cam­paign.
And as Iraqi Kur­dis­tan Region is always keen to main­tain the free­doms of speech and jour­nal­ism, and as there is no cen­sor­ship on all jour­nal­is­tic activ­ity in the region to a degree that even the cor­re­spon­dents of world satel­lite tele­vi­sions tes­tify to this fact, we say that these Ara­bic Sat. TVs should have con­veyed their news and reports truth­fully and in an objec­tive lan­guage so that the pub­lic opin­ion will not be mis­led. There­fore, we call upon the cor­re­spon­dents of the Sat. TVs to aban­don mis­lead­ing styles of report­ing and act real­is­ti­cally as they cover the events.
We reit­er­ate our com­mit­ment to facil­i­tate jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties in Kur­dis­tan.
The Con­sec­u­tive Coun­cil of
Kur­dis­tan Jour­nal­ists Union
Erbil City
4^th April 2003

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p>While the Kurds are jus­ti­fi­ably proud of the media free­doms they enjoy in their region, this state­ment shows the depth of sup­port for the war among the Kur­dish lead­er­ship. That sup­port is reflected among aver­age Kurds, as well. Amer­i­cans — and by exten­sion, the war — are very pop­u­lar here. I’ve had to force money into mer­chants’ hands. The smiles are gen­uine, and the offers to help are too numer­ous to accept. This may be the only place other place earth — except the USA, of course — where Amer­i­cans are so well-liked.
All that aside, I can’t help but worry. Today has been a bad day for jour­nal­ists, with per­son­nel from Al Jazeera and Reuters killed today in the fight­ing in Bagh­dad. A Span­ish (I don’t know the affil­i­a­tion) cam­era­man was also killed. The Reuters cam­era­man, a Ukrain­ian, was killed, and sev­eral other jour­nal­ists injured, when an Amer­i­can tank opened fire on the Pales­tine Hotel, scor­ing a direct hit on the Reuters office. The Amer­i­cans say the tank was respond­ing to a sniper in the hotel, but reporters on the floors above and below the Reuters office say they heard no sniper fire or RPG fire in the area in the 20 min­utes before the tank fired. In sev­eral videos of the attack filmed by inde­pen­dent cor­re­spon­dents, there was no sound of small arms fire.
I don’t want to crit­i­cize the tank com­man­der, since the only thing I know about this is what I can watch on BBC right now. But some inner voice asks why the tank opened up on a tar­get that was well-known as the head­quar­ters for west­ern jour­nal­ists. I’m not say­ing jour­nal­ists were tar­geted, but was there no alter­na­tive to lob­bing a tank shell into a hotel?
Today shows the dan­ger of this whole damn thing, not only to sol­diers, but to jour­nal­ists and civil­ians, too. If a tank gun­ner is will­ing to open up on a hotel to take out a sniper, would he open up on a hos­pi­tal? An apart­ment build­ing?
Sigh I guess we should chalk this up to a tragic mis­take, just one of those things that hap­pen. After all, the journos were there on their own free will. Unlike the cit­i­zens of Bagh­dad, they made the choice to be in the fir­ing line. But it’s still sober­ing reminder of the per­ils of war.
In an attempt to whis­tle past the grave­yard, I taped up the win­dows, side pan­els and roof of my driver’s car today with “TV” (the uni­ver­sal sym­bol for press around here.) But blue tape won’t stop a JDAM once it’s been tar­geted. Frey­doon, my dri­ver, is a good guy, and loyal. He told me today that a friend of his, a pesh­merga named Isam, is dying. He was in the con­voy attacked two days in the friendly fire inci­dent that killed up to 20 pesh­mer­gas. With the jour­nal­ists’ deaths in Bagh­dad, and the news of Freydoon’s friend, I look south to the front lines with apprehension.

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