The Job: News deaths hit an all-time high

by Roy Greenslade (The Guardian, 2007-11-29)

At least 171 journalists and other news media staff have died as a result of their work around the world so far this year, making 2007 the bloodiest year on record for the industry.

With more than a month still to go before the end of the year, the all-time high of 168 deaths recorded in 2006 was exceeded on Tuesday when at least three editorial staff were killed in Sri Lanka during a military air strike on a radio station.

"This horrible statistic should be regarded as a low point in the safety and welfare of the media profession. We need better protection for media workers worldwide," said the president of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), Chris Cramer.

According to INSI's casualty records, the death toll between January 1 and November 28 is comprised of 142 journalists and 29 support staff, such as drivers, translators and news technicians, in 35 countries.

The great majority, 121, were apparently murdered after being targeted because of their jobs. Fifteen died in crossfire or other random attacks, 34 were killed in road or air accidents while the circumstances of one death remain unclear.

The most murderous country again was Iraq, where 64 died, taking the total news media toll since the start of the war to at least 235. Others were Sri Lanka (six murders), Afghanistan, Mexico, India and Philippines (five each) and Haiti, Pakistan and Somalia (four each).

The rest of the story: The Guardian

Follow Up: AP Fires Back, Says Its Probe Clears Iraqi Photog (E&P)

Editor & Publisher, 2007-11-21

A series of accusations raised by the U.S. military against an Associated Press photographer detained for 19 months in Iraq are false or meaningless, according to an intensive AP investigation of the case made public Wednesday.

Evidence and testimony collected by the AP shows no support for allegations that Bilal Hussein took part in insurgent activities or bomb-making, and few of the images he provided dealt directly with Iraqi insurgents.

"Despite the fact that Hussein has not been interrogated since May 2006, allegations have been dropped or modified over time, and new claims added, all without any explanation," said the 48-page report compiled by lawyer and former federal prosecutor Paul Gardephe.

The rest of the story: Editor & Publisher

The Free Press: AP Lawyers Will Go to Iraq Next Week to Defend Photographer (E&P)

Press Group Raises Concerns

by Joe Strupp (Editor & Publisher, 2007-11-21)

Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll believes AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who finally may be charged with unspecified alleged terrorist crimes in Iraq, can get a fair trial there.

But she stressed that the U.S. military's failure to provide AP with specific information or evidence related to charges may well hamper efforts to mount a defense and ultimately free Hussein, whom AP contends is innocent.

"I have no reason to think the Iraqi court system will be anything but fair and impartial," Carroll told E&P a day after AP revealed charges had been brought. "But they can only be impartial about what is presented to them. If one side has evidence and the other side doesn't know what it is, how can we defend Bilal? They have told our lawyers they will find out specifics when the complaint is filed next week."

Carroll's comments come a day after Hussein, 36, who has been held by U.S. and Iraqi military officials in Baghdad since April 2006, received word that the U.S. military planned to seek a criminal complaint against him. An AFP report late Monday stated the complaint accused Hussein of being "a terrorist media operative" who had "infiltrated the AP."

Dave Tomlin, AP associate general counsel, said such language is not new, noting the military had used such vague phrasing for months to describe Hussein, but without substantial evidence or specific incidents that have not been refuted.

"We continue not to have heard anything that would be grounds for a charge," Tomlin said. "What is new this week is that after months of stonewalling, they propose on less than two weeks notice to drag him into a court room."

The rest of the story: Editor & Publisher

Iraq: Military returns tape it took from AP

BAGHDAD (AP) - The U.S. military returned a videotape and digital camera memory card Monday that American soldiers had seized last week from an AP Television News cameraman.

The tape and card were taken without explanation from Ayad M. Abd Ali at the scene of an insurgent attack against the Polish ambassador in Baghdad. The ambassador, Gen. Edward Pietrzyk, suffered burns and was evacuated by helicopter.

After photographing the attack's aftermath and the rescue activities, Abd Ali was detained by U.S. troops for about 40 minutes in spite of having shown the soldiers a valid U.S.-issued press credential and identification.

He says he was never told why he was handcuffed, blindfolded and put in a Humvee, or why the tape and film were taken. Subsequent contact with the U.S. military also has failed to produce a clear explanation for the military's actions.

Other news organizations shot video and still photographs of the scene and had no apparent difficulty.

The rest of the story: Yahoo! News

First Amendment: ABC Journalist Ordered To Disclose Sources

By Joseph Goldstein (The New York Sun, 2007-09-28)

A federal judge in New York has ordered a journalist at ABC News, Brian Ross, to disclose the identities of the government sources he relied upon when reporting about the anthrax attacks of 2001.

Mr. Ross is now the sixth reporter to have been ordered to give up sources to assist with a civil lawsuit brought by a former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, whom the government named as a "person of interest" in the investigation into the deadly anthrax mailings. Mr. Hatfill, who was never charged with the mailings, is suing the federal government for invading his privacy.

The rest of the story: The New York Sun

In dealings with media, Hamas resorts to brutality

Hamas seems confused about how to quash Fatah protests and simultaneously deal with the media. Trying to nurture a reputation for honesty and legal behavior, its leaders promise journalists freedom of action, but the police intimidate the journalists. The result is a kind of self-censorship, local journalists say, that goes beyond what they traditionally practiced under Fatah.

The rest of the story: The International Herald Tribune (2007-09-09)

Interest growing in plight of journalist held at Gitmo

Why have detainees been held at Guantánamo for six years without a mechanism to fairly determine whether they belong there?

From Prisoner 345: What happened to Al Jazeera’s Sami al-Haj in the July/August 2007 edition of the Columbia Journalism Review:

"Despite the novelty of [Sami] al-Haj’s status as the only journalist inside Guantánamo, it was a long time before he attracted much media attention. At first, even Al Jazeera was reluctant to cover his story. 'Up until around 2003, the air was very tense. You didn’t really want to investigate it too much,' said Ahmad Ibrahim, an Al Jazeera producer who has researched al-Haj’s case. 'At least to a lot of people around the world, holding people was probably justifiable due to the enormity of 9/11. And in the Arab world, the situation at Guantánamo was difficult to comprehend or believe, even that any kind of torture would be perpetrated by the U.S. A lot of people didn’t comprehend what Guantánamo stood for, and the legal arguments that were used to justify it.' In 2005, Ibrahim invited Stafford Smith to Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha. 'That’s when the big interest in Sami and his plight started.'

"Since then, al-Haj has become a cause célèbre in the Arab world. Ibrahim made a forty-five-minute documentary about him, Prisoner 345, and Al Jazeera regularly reports on his case. Al-Haj has also been featured in several stories in the British press. But despite repeated efforts by Ibrahim and Stafford Smith, there was until very recently almost no coverage of al-Haj in the U.S., apart from a New York Times column last October by Nicholas Kristof. Al Jazeera 'is still perceived in a very negative way' in the U.S., said Joel Campagna of the Committee to Protect Journalists. 'I think that has made people pause when looking at this case.'

"But while some journalists may distrust Al Jazeera, or may have believed Donald Rumsfeld’s discredited claim that the inmates represented the 'worst of the worst,' others may have avoided writing about detainees like al-Haj because of a more mundane bias: the simple difficulty of reporting about Guantánamo. It’s often been noted that the lopsided legal process fashioned by the Bush administration makes it virtually impossible for detainees to defend themselves. A lesser noticed consequence is that the withholding of evidence makes it impossible for journalists to write a conventionally 'balanced' story about individual detainees—and hence, they are less likely to write about them at all. While researching this piece, for instance, I’ve had plenty of access to al-Haj’s lawyer and to Al Jazeera, but none to the Department of Defense or al-Haj himself. This imbalance is uncomfortable, but to be deterred by it would be to miss the point. The central question underlying the case of al-Haj and the other detainees is not their guilt or innocence, but why they have been held at Guantánamo for six years without a mechanism to fairly determine whether they belong there."

The rest of the story: The Columbia Journalism Review

The War: Journalists removed from Iraq bomb site

Iraqi police removed photographers from the site of bomb blasts that killed at least seven people in central Baghdad yesterday in the first use of a controversial new policy restricting media access.

The rest of the story by Ian Black, The Guardian's Middle East editor, is on today's edition of Guardian Unlimited.

Are reporters the same as foreign spies?

The U.S. Army apparently thinks so.

Wired's national security Danger Room report's on the Army's tough new security directives urging that reporters be handled like Al-Qaeda moles and treating the communication of unclassified, so-called "critical" and "sensitive" data as almost as serious a matter as leaking top secret information.

Army personnel should "consider handling attempts by unauthorized personnel to solicit critical information or sensitive information as a Subversion and Espionage Directed Against the U.S. Army (SAEDA) incident," the regulations say.

(1) DA personnel who have been involved in or have knowledge of a SAEDA incident will report all facts immediately to the nearest supporting counterintelligence (CI) office as required by AR 381–12.

(2) If these offices are not readily available, SAEDA incidents will be reported to the unit or organization security manager or commander.

(3) Security managers and commanders will ensure that, without exception, reports are relayed as securely and expeditiously as possible, but in all cases within 24 hours, to the nearest CI element.

(4) If counterintelligence support is not available, call the 1–800–CALL–SPY (1–800–225–5779) hotline, leave a message with your name and telephone number and no further details.

Secrecy News chief Steven Aftergood calls out this section -- which "encourages Army personnel to view inquisitive members of the press or the public as if they were enemies of the United States" -- as one of the worst in a "very rich and disturbing document."

He also notes that this policy -- and others like it -- seems "to be having an effect. I have noticed quite a few valuable Army web sites that used to be publicly available until this year and no longer are. One example: many hundreds of documents on the Army JAG site have recently been made password-protected."

Check out the presentation from the Army's 1st Information Operations Command, above. "And," as Danger Room puts it, "be ready to gag."