Another view on the U.S. military, journalists, and Iraq

Amid controversy over whether U.S. troops did or didn't target journalists in Iraq and what CNN's Eason Jordan did or didn't say, and as the right-wing blogs are storming against what many of them believe to be MSM (mainstream media)'s anti-military bias, comes a documentary assailing MSM from the left: Weapons of Mass Deception.  I have not yet seen it. Just the trailer and this interview on AlterNet, in which Amy Goodman interviews media critic and filmaker Danny Schechter about "fishy deaths of unembedded reporters."  The interview includes the following excerpt from the film's transcript:

Narrator: Journalists and media workers were targeted in Iraq. Was it deliberate? To keep the story on message by intimidating un-embedded journalists. How did the media in the street challenge these killings? Some were killed by so-called friendly fire. Others victims of calculated attacks, missiles, tank shells, and bombs dropped on or near journalists. Some media critics concluded it was intentional, although the Pentagon denied it. Before the war, the BBC's Kate Adey reported she was told by the Pentagon that independent journalists could be targeted.

Reporter:: The 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel was the target. A U.S. tank shelled the Palestine Hotel, which was crowded with journalists, killing two cameramen. One works for a Spanish network, and the other one works for Reuters.

Narrator: Now another incident. Look at this. An American tank on the bridge across from the Palestine hotel in Baghdad. A soldier claimed his tank was fired on. Listen carefully. There are no sounds.

Samia Nakhoul: We moved to the Palestine Hotel because the Pentagon asked our organizations to let us leave because it was a target and when we moved to the Palestine Hotel our organization told the Pentagon we were at the Palestine Hotel. So did every news organization.

Narrator: Again, minutes later no sounds were heard, no one firing at U.S. soldiers. Suddenly without provocation  –

Samia Nakhoul: We saw an orange glow, and this was the tank shell that hit our office. And you can imagine the panic, the wounded – it was me and another photographer. I can't imagine that they would target journalists. You know, I couldn't believe why would they target us? What have we done to them?

Narrator: After the war press freedom groups were still demanding a real investigation. The Pentagon's Victoria Clark told me there was a report that showed that the soldiers were acting in self-defense.

Narrator: Was there any attempt to find out the facts independently or a thorough investigation?

Samia Nakhoul: No  –  the Pentagon never interviewed me personally on it. I don't think any of my colleagues were interviewed by the Pentagon.

Narrator: Samia's organization, Reuters, demanded an independent investigation, but most media companies didn't even press on this issue. No one was held accountable. It was all passed off as an accident, the fog of war and all that.

In the interview Schechter says: "What's also outrageous is that the American media companies did not demand an investigation of this, did not join Reuters in demanding an investigation. So it just wasn't just complicity and collusion in the coverage of the war but a refusal to get involved in an effort to try to find out what really happened, what the facts were. To try to get at the truth of what happened to their own people. That to me compounds the shock of the way in which the media played the role it did." 

The film is apparently opening in New York and a few other places this weekend. Info is here.

Again, it would be useful if we could hear from more journalists on the ground in Iraq about this...

Comments

[Rony]

The confusion deepens.

-Rony

[Glen Wishard]

If someone had evidence about the murder of a journalistic colleague and is witholding this information from the authorities, then they show a poor sense of professional solidarity, not to mention criminal negligence.

What we have seen is people playing around with speculations and insinuations, and when challenged on the facts they insist they are only talking about accidental deaths. This what Eason Jordan has done. Maybe he doesn't appreciate the seriousness of such accusations. Or maybe, in time when Walter Cronkite can accuse Karl Rove of collaborating with Osama bin Laden, journalistic standards have gone out the window.

[Steve Rhodes]

You can watch the Democracy Now interview with Danny and see that segment. WMD opened Friday at a couple of theaters in NYC.

There was a major outcry in international media over the attack on the Palestine Hotel (which the US military knew was a place media were staying) which killed two journalists.

But there wasn't much coverage in the US press beyond the immediate reporting that day and brief reports later.

This International Federation of Journalists page on an April 2004 protest has some info and a link to a report. It may explain the positive reaction to the comment by Europeans.

As was mentioned in another comment, The Control Room (whcih is out on DVD) covers a reporter from Al-Jazeera who was killed. Again, the US military knew that media were in the building.

There is a Salon article, The "unconscionable" death of Mazen Dana.

And there is a piece by Rodney Palmer who co-produced a Frontline/World story, In the Line of FIre, on the danger journalist face covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which featured Mazen Dana.

I don't think they targeted media, but they shouldn't have attacked those buildings or shot Mazen Dana. And there should have been better investigations of why they were attacked both by the military and the US press.

[Sisyphus]

The Committee to Protect Journalists also did an investigation and critiqued the redacted Army report made available. (The report is also available there.)

[Chris Sandvick]

David Zucchino, a national correspondent for the LA Times, covers this incident extensively in his new book Thunder Run. His account in no way supports the conspiracy theory being offered by Schechtner. He writes "The crews had been warned that a forward observer had spotted American tanks and was calling in motars. Motar rounds had already exploded near the tanks. Enemy fire was coming from the opposite bank. Cut off from new reports since leaving Kuwait almost three weeks earlier, the crews had never heard of the Palestine." (p 301).

[Chris Sandvick]

The striking thing about these accounts is how stunningly ignorant these people are of combat. It makes me wonder if their only reference is movies. They really believe that only a man with weapon is a threat when the reality is an artillery observer with a radio and a pair of binoculars is a far greater threat. Nakhoul clearly has not made any effort at education even after getting shelled. Assuming that their purpose here is an honest one.

[Chris Sandvick]

Err... except Zucchino knows how to spell mortar. Sorry for the typo's.

[Blanknoone]

I'm disappointed that you fell for the hype and distortions.

It is very clear that the soldiers mistook the journalists for an Iraqi artillery spotter they knew was in the area. They go on and on about how no one was shooting from the hotel. Are these war zone reporters so ignorant of the military to not know how devastating a spotter calling in the 'King of Battle'--Field Artillery --can be? Are they so ignorant of what actually happened in the incident in which they were involved? Or are the deliberately distorting it?

Here is a detailed link:
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=34&paper=250

The CPJ is out of line too...they at least recognize that it was an honest mistake, but said it was 'avoidable' They think that the military is responsible for keeping track of journalists operating behind enemy lines. News Flash: The military should not target you. And they don't. But they don't have any obligation to use their resources to keep track of you, brief every soldier where you are, or aren't. They have better things to do, like fight and win our nations wars. Welcome to the battlefield.

Only so much information is valuable...too much and information overload makes it all useless. Keeping track of journalists is information that pushes much more important out. It is a mistake to sacrifice soldiers lives (the consequence of pushing out more relevant info) to try to babysit everyone with a notepad.

If you want to make sure that the US military won't accidentally shoot at you, embed. Or stay off the battlefield.

This is a minor point, but even the wordsmith's choice of words is wrong and inflammitory. The hotel was not 'shelled' The tank that fired on the hotel was being shelled. Shelled specifically means indirect fire. The hotel was shot. It was a 120mm smoothbore cannon, but it was shot (direct fire), not shelled (indirect fire). There is a big diffence. If the hotel were hit while being shelled, the building would have likely come down killing all 100 journalists. An artillery round (designed to devastate as large an area as possible) packs a whole heck of a lot more wallop than a round designed to burn a small hole through tank armor.