BREAKING NEWS: NEW YORK TIMES JOURNALIST KILLED IN IRAQ

How many journalist have been killed covering the war in Iraq? Since 2003 110 and 40 support workers. Today the 2007's tally rose to 28, 2 of them this week alone. Covering war zones is no joke.

Khalid W. Hassan, 23, a reporter and interpreter, was shot and killed in the south central Seiydia district, the newspaper reported.

Hassan was killed while driving to work, the Times reported. He had called the bureau to say that he was taking an alternative route because his usual way was blocked by a security checkpoint, the newspaper said. The Times reported that the journalist called his mother a half hour later to say, "I've been shot." The family notified the newspaper that Hassan later died.

An Iraqi of Palestinian descent, Hassan had worked for the Times Baghdad bureau since fall 2003, the newspaper said. He is survived by his mother and four sisters. He is the second New York Times employee killed on assignment in Iraq, Fakher Haider, 38, was killed in Basra in September 2005.

Yesterday, Reuters' photographer and his driver, who were killed in eastern Baghdad during what witnesses described as a U.S. helicopter attack. Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver and camera assistant Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed by a U.S. strike that claimed the lives of nine other Iraqis in the Al-Amin al-Thaniyah neighborhood, Reuters reported, citing a preliminary Iraqi police report.

And then some people only worry about...

The Dangers of Keeping them honest

The Armenian - American, Hrant Dink, who had received death threats from nationalists for questioning Turkey's denial of an Armenian genocide, was shot in the head and killed today in front of his office in Turkey.

Last October, Russian Anna Politkovskaya, a leading investigative journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot, contract-style, in her Moscow apartment building.

“When an internationally renowned reporter can be gunned down in her own apartment building and the perpetrators walk away free, it has a devastating effect on the press. Fewer tough questions are asked, fewer risky stories are covered, Her case shows why impunity is such a serious threat to press freedom, not only in Russia but in nations such as the Philippines, Colombia, Mexico, and Pakistan.”

Large corporations and powerful groups would do anything to just keep their dirt under their rugs. Could you imagine any media outlet daring to expose the real contracts and conditions of a powerhouse like Halliburton while Cheney is still the VP?

Paul Klebnikov, Forbes Russia
July 9, 2004
Moscow
Klebnikov, 41, editor of Forbes Magazine who exposed the workings of the country's shadowy billionaire tycoons, was killed outside his Moscow office. An American of Russian descent, he was struck several times by shots fired from a passing car.

Over the years, experience has demonstrated, that the attacks are done where the journalists are more vulnerable: their homes or office. Their families are often victims of hostilities, harassment and even abduction. Journalists are not celebrities. The more exposed they are in that matter, the more vulnerable and less capable they are to do their job without the added burden.

Many might be thinking, that doesn't´t happen in the USA. WRONG. More journalist are jailed here, companies threatened with losing their licenses or simply denying access to information. Something Rumsfield, Cheney and González have never doubt of doing and force.

After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf states on August 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency urged news organizations not to photograph dead bodies. Numerous bodies were left in public areas for days after the hurricane amid a government recovery effort that was widely criticized for being slow and ineffective. The Washington Post reported that in at least one instance state authorities echoed the demand not to photograph the dead.

New Orleans police adopted an aggressive stance in several reported cases. On September 1, city police ripped a camera from the neck of Lucas Oleniuk of the Toronto Star and removed the camera's memory cards, robbing the photographer of more than 350 images. The seized images included "officers delivering a fierce beating to two suspects," the Toronto Star reported. The same day, Gordon Russell of the New Orleans–based Times-Picayune wrote that he and another photographer were slammed against a wall and had their gear thrown to the ground by police. On September 7, NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported that he and his crew were ordered to stop filming a National Guard unit securing a downtown store. "I have searched my mind for some justification for why I can't be reporting in a calm and heavily defended American city and cannot find one," Williams told The Washington Post.

On October 18, a New Orleans police officer was caught on film harassing an Associated Press Television News producer whose crew was filming two other officers beating a man suspected of public intoxication. Two of the officers were fired and one was suspended.

Maybe the pressure of the US government towards the media outlets is the main reason the international press call US Media "soft wimps", that have left the hard questioning to Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. And with the added disadvantage of the celebrity cult that persists in the USA, where TV journalists draw attention to the verge of invasion of privacy or simple good old stalking.

So please keep in mind, that the next time you come across of an image of Anderson Cooper´s apartment, his home address, his family´s whereabouts, his personal life, you are not only enjoying a piece of entertainment gossip, you are supporting his vulnerability and mining his capability to access information, and by that silencing one of the few voices that ¨keeps them honest¨.

Technorati tags: Anderson Cooper, Keeping them Honest, Danger, Journalism, Killed Journalists, Vulnerability, Stalkers.

The Journalist and The Jijadi

Journalism is a serious matter. Good
journalism is essential and dangerous. Tonight HBO airs the documentary The Journalist and the Jihadi, the murder of Daniel Pearl.

As you might have read in our previos posts, 35 journalist have been killed to date. The numbers are increasing with the conflicts. And the search for truth is in some cases are death sentences. We hope you might tune in. There are a lot more things about journalists than their ties or sexual preferences. They risk their life for the information. So please don't trivialize their lives nor their sacrifices.

Synopsis

Narrated by acclaimed journalist Christiane Amanpour, THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI: THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL was directed and produced by Ahmed A. Jamal and Ramesh Sharma, who gained unprecedented access to many of the key figures in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in early 2002. Anant Singh ("Sarafina!," "Cry, The Beloved Country," HBO's Oscar®- nominated "Yesterday") also produced. The debut of THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI: THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL coincides with events taking place around the globe between Oct. 6 and 15, and organized by the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which battles cultural and religious intolerance through journalism, music and dialogue. Through the words of Pearl's family, friends and colleagues, as well as FBI agents and State Department employees involved in negotiations for Pearl's release, and those who knew Sheikh best, including former schoolmates and associates, the documentary explores the forces that led to the tragedy. Interviewees also include noted philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy; Pakistani police officials; Khalid Khawaja, a retired squadron leader of the Pakistani air force and a former Pakistan Intelligence Officer, known for his links with extreme religious organizations; and Maulana Shamszai, a noted Islamic scholar and the leading source of inspiration for the Taliban, and head of a madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pakistan. Ahmed A. Jamal has received numerous awards for his films, including "Who Will Cast the First Stone?" and "The Beach Boys of Sri Lanka." Through the independent production company First Take Ltd., he has made several groundbreaking documentaries, including "Dead Man Talking," "The Bounty Hunter," "The Dancing Girls of Lahore," "Camel Kids," "Iran - The Other Story" and "The Fundamental Question." Ramesh Sharma is an award-winning feature film and TV producer-director. His Moving Picture Company India Ltd. is among the leading production houses in India. Sharma's list of credits includes the feature film "New Delhi Times," an award winner at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, as well as numerous acclaimed documentaries, including "Rumtek," "Drikung - A Faith in Exile," "Afghanistan - The Taliban Years and Beyond" and "Jihad - The Sword of Islam." THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI: THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL is an HBO Documentary Films presentation, co-produced by Moving Picture, First Take Ltd. and Distant Horizon. Directed and produced by Ahmed A. Jamal and Ramesh Sharma; producer, Anant Singh; narrated by Christiane Amanpour; written by Amit Roy; edited by Tony Appleton; music by David Heath. For HBO: executive producers, Sheila Nevins and Lisa Heller.

http://www.danielpearl.org/

The Danger of Telling the Truth

"“People sometimes pay with their lives for saying out loud what they think. People can even get killed just for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it.”Anna Politkovskaya

Report: Russian reporter dead, police think she was murdered

MOSCOW (CNN) -- A Russian newspaper reporter who has criticized Russia's Chechnya policy has died and police think she was murdered, a Russian news agency reported Saturday.

Interfax reported the death of Anna Politkovskaya, who worked for Novaya Gazeta. A neighbor found her wounded by a bullet late Saturday afternoon in her building's elevator.

A handgun and four cartridge cases were also found.

Dmitry Muratov, the newspaper editor, theorized that she was being punished for stories. A law enforcement source said a young man might have been involved in the incident and police were looking for him. (Posted 10:55 a.m.)

2003 Time Europe Magazine Hero

Mighty Pen: Politkovskaya braves the hell of Chechnya to get the truth
Disquiet On The Chechen Front

BY YURI ZARAKHOVICH MOSCOW
Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the Moscow biweekly Novaya Gazeta, was in Los Angeles last October, picking out her dress for a media awards ceremony, when some staggering news came from Moscow: Chechen terrorists were holding 850 hostages in a theater. The Russian authorities tried to send in negotiators, but the Chechens refused to see most of them. They asked for Politkovskaya.
And so Politkovskaya rushed back to cover yet another episode of one of the world's nastiest and longest wars, which this time had shifted to Moscow. The terrorists, she says, "wanted someone who would accurately report things as they were. My work in Chechnya makes people there feel that I don't lie. But there wasn't much I could do for the hostages anyway." She carried water and fruit juice to them, and reported their dejection and feelings of doom to the world. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed and gassed the theater, killing 41 terrorists and 129 hostages.
Politkovskaya, 44, made her name by writing detailed, accurate and vivid reports on the plight of the civilian population in Chechnya, caught in the horrors of war since 1994. She tells stories of people who are taken from their homes at night and never come back; about extrajudicial executions; about the hungry refugees in cold and damp camps. "It was the refugee problem that started it," she now recalls. When the second Chechen war began in 1999, tens of thousands of refugees began flooding the makeshift relief camps. "It was horrible to stand among the refugees in the field in October 1999, and see cruise missiles flying over your head," she recalls.
When those missiles hit a market in Grozny, it was only prompt coverage by journalists like Politkovskaya that forced the Russian commanders to let ambulances in and refugees out. "Our work is a lever to help people as much as we can," she believes. But it also causes trouble. In February 2000, the FSB (the former KGB) arrested Politkovskaya in the Vedeno district of Chechnya. They kept her in a pit for three days without food or water. "It was important not to let them kill me on the first day," she says. A year later, a Russian officer whose war crimes Politkovskaya had exposed threatened to kill her. Novaya Gazeta had to hide her in Austria for a while. The officer is now awaiting trial on charges of war crimes committed in Chechnya that Politkovskaya was the first to report. "But I don't feel victorious," she says. "I only feel that we're all involved in a great tragedy."
Her editors have had to stand up to pressure from the Kremlin, which is often infuriated by her reporting. Novaya Gazeta balances on the brink of forcible closure. "Well, it goes with the job," she shrugs. Politkovskaya has long since learned to keep her anxieties in check. As she arranges yet another trip to Chechnya, she may now be too famous to be targeted by the FSB. But she really doesn't think about such things. "If you don't have the strength to control your emotions, you're of no help to the people who are in such shock and pain. You only add to their burden," she says.
©TIME. Published April 28, 2003

FreakSpeaker Note:
During the September tragedy in Beslan, award-winning journalist Anna Politkovskaya, while attempting to report and mediate in the crisis, was silenced by what has become known as the Kremlin's poison politics. After her recovery, Politkovskaya continued to report on human atrocities in the war-torn region and speak on behalf of the thousands of victims of Russia's 10 year campaign in Chechnya. In her first visit to the United States since Beslan, Politkovskaya discussed the upsurge in civilian casualties and Vladimir Putin's unequivocal drive toward authoritarianism. As the West is reconsidering its rapprochement with Russia, commentator Dr. Michael McFaul, Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, addressed the Kremlin's post-Beslan policies, growing public discontent with the Putin administration, and the implications and opportunities for U.S. policy.

Hear her speech HERE

2 German journalists killed overnight in northern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Two German journalists traveling in northern Afghanistan were killed overnight, Afghanistan's Interior Ministry and NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Saturday.

They were working for German news agency Deutsche Welle. The two -- who were on a road between Baghlan and Bamian province -- were killed by gunmen in Baghlan, said Zemari Bashary, Interior spokesman.

They had been spending the night in a tent by the road when they were killed around 1 a.m. Saturday. The location is north of the capital, Kabul.

Maj. Dominic Whyte, an ISAF spokesman, said they were operating independently of ISAF at the time of the incident.

It is not clear whether the perpetrators were Taliban, other militants or thieves. The area is not known for Taliban activity. But it does have some level of activity from a militant group called Hezb-e-Islami, led by Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, a renegade warlord. (Posted 10:20 a.m.)