Journalists and terrorism - (when are journalists aiding and abetting terrorism?)

WASHINGTON TIMES.COM ^ | APRIL 8, 2005 | Editors

[CHARLITE]

How close should journalists get to thugs and murderers to get the facts? It's a question that has troubled editors for a long time, but a question that isn't asked nearly often enough. The question takes on new significance in an age of terrorism. We revisit it now that Columbia University has awarded a Pulitzer Prize to an anonymous Associated Press photographer whose connections to terrorists yielded an extraordinary scoop.

By the rules, the AP did nothing wrong. But in a heated exchange with critics who saw the photographs as complicity with terror, an AP spokesman explained that the photographer was "not 'embedded' " with terrorists and did "not have to swear allegiance" to them. This is not very persuasive, but it says something important about the journalistic rules.

The photograph ran in newspapers across the country, including The Washington Times, in December. The director of photography for this newspaper, in fact, acting in his independent capacity, was one of the five judges who recommended awarding the prize. The photograph was riveting. It depicted the murder of three Iraqi election workers in broad daylight in the middle of Baghdad's busy Haifa Street. In it, an unidentified gunman stands unmasked. The slumped body of his first victim lies at his feet. To the right, a soon-to-be dead victim kneels and faces the oncoming traffic.

[el_doctor2]

Story broke today about the CBS one with ties to the Insurgency

[hflynn]

When are Journalist aiding and abetting terrorist?

Every time they file a story.

[joshhiggins]

This would end real quick if the next few times we take out a terrorist safehouse we were to publicly credit a "reporter" as having given us the information we needed to take them out. Whether true or not the terrorists would stop colluding with reporters.

[Cicero]

I find this extremely hard to believe. That was one of dozens of photographs that were almost certainly taken by persons who were affiliated with the terrorists.

What kind of idiot would take himself and his camera to an agreed site at the invitation of dangerous terrorists unless he was affiliated with them or knew he was safe from them?

Who would dare stand there snapping pictures while a gunman shot three people right in front of him unless he knew he was safe?

What kind of person stands there snapping pictures while a string of murders are committed?

This whole episode is morally disgusting. Whichever of the Washington Times's editors voted to give the Iraqi photographer a Pulitzer Prize for what STILL amounts to complicity in murder should have his head examined.