Journalists: Armed and Dangerous?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 15, 2003; 8:29 AM
Have reporters in Iraq been acting too much like soldiers?
It's an easy question to ask from the safety of a desk with a word processor. But a number of recent incidents seem to have blurred the lines between combatants and chroniclers.
CNN's Brent Sadler, for instance, had his bodyguard return fire when he and his crew came under Iraqi attack. An entirely reasonable response, considering the alternative, but why was Sadler storming Tikrit before U.S. forces got there? If reporters with armed escorts go into battle zones on their own, is it any wonder that they will be treated as little different than soldiers?
And doesn't that jeopardize other journalists who ride around dangerous places with press signs on their car, hoping to be treated as neutral observers?
There are, to invoke the requisite cliche, no easy answers here. If you're a reporter and you go to war with your own country's soldiers, you can be fair, you can look for all sides of the story, but you can't be entirely neutral. Not when your life depends on the armed men and women around you.
But your job is very different – even though that's a distinction that enemy forces may have difficulty making.
On almost every other story, reporters try to avoid the question "whose side are you on?" In war, that may be impossible.
One positive benefit: We now have a large group of reporters who understand, many for the first time, what it's like to crawl around in the dirt and get shot at – for whom the military is no longer an alien culture. And vice versa. That should help erode the mutual suspicion that was one of the principal legacies of Vietnam.
The Los Angeles Times covers the Sadler scare:
"It was a war correspondent's worst fear: CNN reporter Brent Sadler and his crew found themselves coming under heavy fire while in Tikrit on Sunday. An armed guard traveling with the team – which had entered Saddam Hussein's hometown ahead of U.S. military forces – fired back, and more than 100 rounds were exchanged before the reporters got away safely.
"'OK, that's gunfire,' Sadler said on live TV as the incident began. 'We're just under attack. Under attack. We're OK, we're OK.' Seconds later, as the CNN convoy sped away from the gunmen, he added with relief: 'I think that's as far as we're going to push it today.'
"The dramatic footage was aired repeatedly through the day, but in the aftermath some media observers questioned whether the CNN team had crossed what has traditionally been a clear line between the military, which wages war, and journalists, who are supposed to be noncombatants. Some critics suggested that reporters lose the presumption of neutrality if they become involved in combat."
Dan Kennedy raises the same question about the exploits of a Boston journalist whose work we mentioned in an earlier column:
"The Boston Herald's embedded reporter, Jules Crittenden, described the limits of objectivity in an astounding account for the Sunday paper, recounting how he called out Iraqi positions as his unit rolled through Baghdad, thus helping to kill three Iraqi soldiers. He writes:
"'Some in our profession might think as a reporter and non-combatant, I was there only to observe. Now that I have assisted in the deaths of three human beings in the war I was sent to cover, I'm sure there are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc. I'll keep the argument short. Screw them, they weren't there. But they are welcome to join me next time if they care to test their professionalism.'
"Crittenden's account comes closer than anything I've read in this three-week war to making me feel as though I were there, and experiencing for myself the abject fear and its close cousin, exhiliration, that define combat.
"But of course, this isn't objectivity – a bogus concept in any case – or, for that matter, a fair, comprehensive view of what's going on in Iraq. The reality is that Crittenden's account illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the embed program. . . . No reporter is going to be 'objective' about those who are protecting his or her life. And Crittenden's assistance in killing Iraqi troops who were trying to kill him is perfectly understandable. Who among us wouldn't do exactly the same thing?"
The most honest rendering we've seen of embedded life, hands down, comes from Chris Ayres of the Times of London:
"We had become lost in a blizzard of mud: we were sitting helpless on the side of the road as 12 Republican Guard tanks approached. We were saved by two US F15 jets, but only after an excruciating half-hour wait. The next morning there were piles of Iraqi bodies on the road, still in their uniforms.
"My account of the attempted ambush later made the front page of The Times. When I heard that the story had made it to page one, I realised why some journalists choose to become full-time war correspondents: the thrill of writing an I-nearly-died-a-gruesome-death story is almost unbeatable. It requires, however, that you nearly die a gruesome death. To get another story on a similar scale, I thought, I would have to go through the whole nearly-dying thing all over again. And what if I did actually die? Surely only a disturbed person would put themselves in mortal danger simply for front-page bragging rights?"
Ayres later decided to pull out: "When I reached the headquarters of the 1st Marine Division in central Iraq, a senior public affairs officer called me a [really bad] journalist because I had written a story saying that the supply lines were being attacked by the Iraqis and that we hadn't moved from our positions in several days.
"'I'm glad you're leaving, because otherwise I would be kicking your [butt] out of here,' he said. A Marine behind him, overhearing the conversation, grabbed my camping chair and pulled it away. 'You can sit in the [expletive] dirt,' he said. 'I ought to [expletive] shoot you.'"
Hey, you don't have to get huffy about it.
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