[Media-watch] MoD tactics 'are putting unembedded journalists' lives at risk'

[david Miller]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=392439


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MoD tactics 'are putting unembedded journalists' lives at risk'

By Andrew Buncombe in Basra and Eric Silver

31 March 2003


British journalists covering the war in Iraq said yesterday their lives were
being put at risk because the Ministry of Defence has decided to hinder
correspondents who are not attached to its units.

Not only have officials decided that journalists not in their official pool
ought not to receive assistance but, in some cases, reporters who have made
their own way into the country are being forced to sleep in their vehicles
in unsafe streets rather than being allowed to park in army bases, air
strips and ports that the invading forces have seized.

"My job is to make your lives as difficult as possible. You will get no help
whatsoever," a senior army spokesman allegedly told one group of
journalists. Another senior officer involved in organising facilities for
the press said he wanted Kuwaiti authorities to arrest reporters seeking to
enter Iraq and have them deported.

Two Israeli and two Portuguese journalists were detained by US and British
soldiers 100 miles south of Baghdad at gunpoint, deprived of food for 48
hours, then expelled from Iraq at the weekend. One of them, Dan Semama, a
correspondent with Israel's Channel 1 television, said guards at the
entrance to a US army camp accused the four, who were not accredited to
coalition forces, of spying.

Mr Semama said that when one of the Portuguese begged to be allowed to tell
his wife and children that he was still alive, "five gorillas jumped on the
reporter, who is small and thin and gentle. They knocked him to the ground,
kicked him, stepped on him, tied him up and threw him into the camp. He came
back half an hour later. He was crying like a child."

The four had entered Iraq in a rented Jeep and followed a US convoy,
reporting home by satellite telephone. At the gate to their base, guards
ordered them out of the Jeep and shouted at them to put their hands up. When
the two Israelis, who have dual nationality, showed their French passports,
it only made things worse. France is not the American army's flavour of the
month.

"There was one captain," Mr Semama said, "who wanted us to lie on the ground
with our faces in the sand and dust. 'Stick your head in the sand and don't
look," he shouted at us. I told him I was 55 years old. He replied, 'Do it,
or I'll shoot you'."

The next day, the four were flown under escort to Kuwait by helicopter.
Again, US troops yelled that they were spies. The nightmare only ended when
a military police sergeant confirmed that they were indeed journalists. He
apologised "in the name of the United States" and delivered them to a hotel.

The British Army has long enjoyed a reputation for having an excellent
relationship with the media, providing assistance and often vital
information on conditions in the field. While individual officers in combat
zones in southern Iraq have continued this tradition, they admit they are
under orders to deny assistance to non-pool or "unilateral" journalists.

The problem has partly been created by the so-called embedding system under
which journalists have been attached to units, providing in some cases
unprecedented access to frontline operations. It is also clear that since
the death of the ITV journalist Terry Lloyd, who was travelling
independently, the authorities have been keen to avoid similar incidents.

The Mail on Sunday journalist Barbara Jones, who rescued Mr Lloyd's injured
team-member Daniel Demoustier, has said: "We get the strong feeling the
unilateralists are the untouchables, a bloody nuisance."

A group of Australian journalists travelling independently were told that
the military wanted to rounded them up and take their visas from them.

It seems that Washington and London are not keen for their actions to be
scrutinised by journalists outside their control and whose reports are not
subject to censorship by "media minders". The behaviour of officers is,
according to a number of senior correspondents, putting lives at risk.

Last night, in Umm Qasr ­ the border town where aid distribution has been
postponed because of security problems ­ Royal Marines refused to allow The
Independent and other British newspapers entry to a largely empty hotel
compound which troops were holding. Some "embedded" journalists have also
attacked "unilaterals" for their reports which have been critical of the
soldiers. 
        






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