In the Line of Fire
The first four are well-documented and oft-discussed American media casualties of our military engagement in Iraq, regularly cited as examples of the dangers of reporting from the front.
But the last was an Iraqi who served as a translator for CBS News in Baghdad before he was kidnapped and killed. His name and commitment and spirit were discussed for just a few days after his death. But it is Lafta's fate that is far more common, while also being far less known.
Along those lines, an Independent piece was published today, calling attention to a grim benchmark recently met in Iraq:
One landmark which passed virtually unnoticed was that the Iraq conflict has become the deadliest by far for the media trying to cover it, with more than 200 journalists killed to date. To put this in perspective, two were killed in the First World War, 68 in the Second, 77 in Vietnam and 36 in the Balkans. And the toll in Iraq shows no sign of declining. It is, if anything, rising. "Covering Iraq," says Chris Cramer, the president of CNN International, "is the single most dangerous assignment in the history of journalism."…The Committee to Protect Journalists breaks down the numbers as "about 85 percent of media deaths have been Iraqi." Assuming that those the Independent and CPJ's data sets agree with each other even roughly, that puts the death toll for Iraqi journalists or media workers at or around 170 Iraqis.In such a place where life remains so cheap and death is meted out brutally and casually, the media will remain exposed to danger and it is the Iraqi journalists who will continue to pay the ultimate price.
"We should not be in this position, we are not parties in this conflict, we are just trying to tell the people what is happening", says Hakim Ibrahim, a journalist in Baghdad. "But I have told my wife to be prepared for the worst. Anything can happen. This is Iraq."
It's natural for us, on this side of the pond, to focus more on the Americans who get killed or injured while they're trying to file their stories and help our understanding of the world. But it's important to remember that just as we're waiting for the Iraqi populace to "stand up" so we can "stand down," there are over a hundred Iraqis who have already stood up in harm's way to do the same for their countrymen and the rest of the world – and who paid the ultimate sacrifice, as well.