Posted on 10/20/2003 1:05:26 PM PDT by Ace Correspondent
Press Clips
by Cynthia Cotts
They Shoot Journeys, Don't They?
CPJ Calls Hotel Palestine Deaths Avoidable
June 4 - 10, 2003
New evidence suggests that a war crime may have taken place in Baghdad on April 8. That morning, Taras Protsyuk, a Ukraine-born cameraman employed by Reuters, was standing on the 15th-floor balcony of the Palestine Hotel. José Couso, an employee of the Spanish news company Telcinco, was filming from a balcony one floor below. Suddenly a U.S. tank less than a mile away fired a single round at the hotel, hitting the 15th-floor balcony. Protsyuk was found lying on his back, unconscious. Couso was hit by debris. Both died soon afterward.
Now, Couso's relatives have asked a judge to extradite three U.S. military officers to Spain, where the officers stand accused of war crimes and excessive force against civilians. The Pentagon has consistently justified these killings as self-defense, because U.S. troops were allegedly being fired on by someone in the vicinity of the hotel. But according to an investigation by the Committee to Protect Journalists, "There is simply no evidence to support the . . . position that U.S. forces were returning hostile fire from the Palestine Hotel. It conflicts with eyewitness testimonies of numerous journalists in the hotel."
Last week, CPJ posted its report on the incident at cpj.org. Authors Joel Campagna and Rhonda Roumani conclude that the killings were not intentional, but could have been avoided. CPJ has filed FOIA requests, and the watchdog group now demands that the Pentagon conduct a thorough and public investigation of the matter. (A military investigation is underway, and one Pentagon source questions whether journalists on the hotel balconies could know with certainty that no fire was being directed at troops from the hotel.)
Why is this important? In a moral universe, there is no excuse for killing journalists under any circumstances. Firing on media facilities during wartime is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which is why CPJ was alarmed back in 2001, when the U.S. claimed it had "accidentally" bombed Al-Jazeera offices in Kabul. Killing journalists in response to a perceived threat is no more justifiable than killing them accidentally, especially when it appears that, with reasonable care, the deaths could have been avoided. In the U.S., one definition of voluntary manslaughter applies when a killing is unintentional but resulted from unreasonable and grossly reckless conduct.
On May 28, The New York Times and The Washington Post ran news articles about the CPJ report and the allegations filed by Couso's relatives in Spain. The defendants are Lieutenant Colonel Philip DeCamp, commander of the Fourth Battalion 64th Armored Regiment of the Third Infantry Division; Captain Philip Wolford, company commander of the tank unit that fired on the hotel; and Sergeant Shawn Gibson, the officer who asked Wolford for permission to fire and got it.
The good news is that an honest journalist has emerged as the hero of the CPJ narrative. On April 8, AP reporter Chris Tomlinson happened to be embedded with the Fourth Battalion, in which capacity he overheard crucial evidence. Tomlinson has no history as a military critic; in fact, he is an army veteran who recently called the decision to embed reporters with U.S. troops in Iraq an unqualified success.
On April 8, when Fourth Battalion tanks stationed on the west side of the Tigris came under heavy fire by Iraqis, Tomlinson was holed up in a U.S. command center inside one of Saddam Hussein's palaces, also on the west side of the river. Because he had access to a military radio, the reporter was able to monitor conversations between company members and between a commander and his superiors. By mid-morning, Tomlinson realized that the tanks were searching for a "forward observer," an Iraqi who was likely coordinating attacks on U.S. troops from a secure vantage spot.
Enter Colonel David Perkins, the commander of the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division and another hero of the story. Perkins worried that in the heat of this battle, U.S. tanks might fire on journalists who were working out of the Palestine Hotel on the east side of the river. Perkins asked Tomlinson to help identify the hotel and prevent it from being hit. Tomlinson called the AP office in Doha, Qatar, to find out what the hotel looked like and tried to get a message to the journalists, asking them to hang sheets out the windows.
Around the same time, Sergeant Shawn Gibson was down by the river, manning a tank. His company had been under fire all morning. When he saw someone with binoculars in a building across the river, he asked Captain Philip Wolford for permission to fire and got it. Immediately after the hotel was hit, Tomlinson recalls, Wolford's commanding officer, DeCamp, started screaming over the radio, "Who just shot the Palestinian [sic] Hotel? Did you just fucking shoot the Palestinian Hotel?" Shortly afterward, Perkins ordered that no one was to shoot the hotel under any circumstances.
The CPJ report is particularly skeptical of claims by both Gibson and Wolford that they didn't know journalists were inside the building. Not only did Perkins know this, but CPJ photos taken from the tank's location show the hotel distinctly visible in the skyline. CPJ also reports that anyone looking in that direction through binoculars would have seen the words "Hotel Palestine" on the building. So was the killing of these cameramen an accident, self-defense, voluntary manslaughter, or first-degree murder?
In a display of independence from the government, U.S. media companies should join CPJ in pressuring the Pentagon to produce a full account of the killings. With so many war stories now in question and media credibility at a record low, it's time for news professionals to get back to where they once belonged: distrusting public officials and providing accurate information to citizens so they can make informed decisions. Defending the rights of nonembedded media in wartime would be a good first step.
Stay Safe and stay on em !
In a display of independence from the government, U.S. media companies should join CPJ in pressuring the Pentagon to produce a full account of the killings. With so many war stories now in question and media credibility at a record low, it's time for news professionals to get back to where they once belonged: distrusting public officials and providing accurate information to citizens so they can make informed decisions. Defending the rights of nonembedded media in wartime would be a good first step.The problem is not, having U.S. media be independent of the government. The problem is how to have democratic U.S. government which is not controlled by the U.S. media.
As a whole, journalists oppose the US.Journalists are foolhardily brave when it comes to risking mistaken defensive fire by U.S. soldiers. CNN wasn't quite so daring when Saddam was in charge, and putting people through shredders.Their lives are worth no more than our troops who have been ruthlessly murdered lately. Murders The VV couldn't care less about.
Reports of human rights abuses come in inverse proportion as the human rights abuses get more severe.
Not only so, but the information they gathered in the Palestine Hotel didn't make Peter Arnett a particularly accurate reporter of current events in Baghdad, did it? He could have just as well been in Paris, if all he was going to do was spout anti-U.S. propaganda.Propaganda that Saddam would have--might have, actually--paid handsomely for.
As an opponent of "campaign finance reform," I have no qualms about claiming that I am far more of a proponent of the First Amendment than any journalist (or other) advocate of CFR is.But the truth is that while journalism styles itself "the press," journalism is merely a genre of nonfiction publishing. And that the rules under which practitioners of that particular genre operate have been developed over the years to make journalism profitable. And that journalism is profitable only if it entertains.
It is also the case that we-the-people express our sovereinty only on election day, and actually do not need to keep up with events on a day-to-day basis (a feat which was not technologically possible in the founding era) in order to vote prudently. And that, indeed, "October Suprise" manipulations of the public mood immediately before an election depend on journalism for their effect. And it is true that any given significant subject will be more accurately and completely covered by a nonfiction book on the subject than it ever will be in news reports.
In sum, journalism is tainted by its deadlines and by all other entertainment imperatives under which it operates--including superficiality and emphasis on bad news. And journalism is tainted by its guild mentality which, in plain sight, functions as a conspiracy against actual objectivity.
Journalists are fearmongers, and fear is anticonservative. Journalists portray fearmongering as "objective," and condemn any who counsel courage as "not objective, not a journalist." Journalists use their own deadlines as an excuse for their incompleteness and inaccuracy, yet boast that journalism is "the first draft of history" even though--as in the case of journalism's "red scare" scare, contemporaneous publication by journalism of claims that journalism is being "muzzled" are self-falsifying.
I will link this into my on-going thread
Why Broadcast Journalism isof analysis of the characteristics and perspective of journalism.
Unnecessary and IllegitimateOf course the irony is, ExSoldier, that after the fact you have cause to be glad that the embeds were there to document the valor and restraint of the U.S. military. It is your opponents who rue it; their journalist heroes now are the "victim" garritroopers of the Palestine Hotel whose "first draft of history" was--and could only be--Ba'athist propaganda. Just remember to use the deadline as your excuse, and never allow journalism to be critiqued against the actual facts . . .
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