One of the commenters in the post about Dmitry below wanted to know how many journalists who had died in Iraq were foreign and how many were Iraqi. Well, the Committee to Protect Journalists has just such a list.
Of the 101 journalists killed in Iraq, 79 were Iraqi. The others included 12 Europeans, three from other Arab countries, two from the United States and five from all other countries.
That the vast majority of journalists killed -- as well as the 38 media workers, which includes translators and the like -- are Iraqi is significant. Like the Iraqi civilians, the local journalists there are the ones who are most affected by the violence that permeates their country.
Fourteen journalists died in 2003, the year of the invasion and the trajectory has been mostly pointing up in the number of deaths each year: 24 in 2004, 23 in 2005, 32 in 2006 and now 8 in 2007.
For a capsule account of each journalist who was killed, here are the links:
(Note, the links include journalists killed in places other than Iraq as well.)
I’m guessing that just like with soldiers’ casualties versus soldiers’ deaths, there is a lot more violence against journalists that these numbers don’t represent, since they don’t count serious but non-fatal injuries. Weisskopf, Nachtwey and Woodruff come to mind. Curious if any of the discrepency between Iraqi media deaths and foreigner media deaths is due to access to medical care? Also curious what similar data on NGO workers would look like.
Jeezuz Chris, a targeted journalist should only be so lucky as to die quickly (considering the number of kidnappings and worse). I just wonder why you guys spend extended amounts of time covering such a cluster-fuck of a situation.
When will it be time to segue back to the USA and use this experience to do column work or something? Perhaps lecturing. Heck, you could teach war-zone arabic culture at Ft Huachuca or something. I just wish you’d get the hell out of that area.
-Patrick (original B-T-I commenter)
Just curious: What makes you stay? I have to imagine the glamour of being a war-zone correspondent wore-off rather quickly. I know that every job that I’ve ever had never lived up to the image I’d painted of it.
I enjoy your writing and your willingness to tell sides of a story that are often unpopular. The writing you did on last summer’s Israeli campiagn proved to me that you’re not just a guy who needed to write things to refute GWB’s policies (which I suspected at first).
I think with your experience, you are far more valuable back in the states now. People need to hear your perspective first-hand.
I dont understand why you keep risking your life for these article when people dont appreciate them enough. I mean, I respect the work that you do and i know that the media on TV doenst even begin to cover the truth in what is going on in Iraq, but seriously, look at the second comment from the top, doesn’t it just make you feel like you are doing all this work for nothing? How do you deal with people like this?