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Why Do Journalists
Become Targets?
By
Robert Fisk
The murder of Daniel Pearl of the Wall
Street Journal was as revolting as it was outrageous.
But why was he killed? Because he was a Westerner, a “
Kaffir”? He was an American?
Or because he was a journalist? And if he was killed because
he was a reporter what has
happened to the protection which we in our craft used to enjoy?
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In Pakistan and Afghanistan,
we can be seen as Kaffir, as unbelievers. Our face, our hair,
even our spectacles, mark us out as Westerners. The Muslim cleric
who wished to talk to me in an Afghans refugee village outside
Peshawar last October was stopped by a man who pointed at me
and asked: “ why are you taking this kaffir into our mosque?”
Weeks later, a crowed of Afghan refugees, grief- stricken at
the slaughter of their relatives in a US B-52 bomber air raid,
tried to kill me because they thought I was an American. But
over the past quarter century I have witnessed the slow, painful,
dangerous erosion of respect for our work. We used to risk our
lives in wars. We still do but journalists were really deliberate
targets.
We were impartial witnesses to conflict, often the only witness,
the first writer of history. Even the nastiest militias understood
this, “Protect him, look after him, he is a journalist,”
I recall a Palestinian guerilla ordering his men when I entered
the burring Lebanese town of Bhamdoun in 1983. But in Lebamdoun,
in Algeria and then in Bosnia, the protection began to disintegrate.
Reporters in Beirut were taken hostage – the Associated
Press’s Terry Anderson disappeared for almost seven years-
while Algerian journalist were hunted down and beheaded by Islamic
groups throughout the nineties. Olivier Quemener, a French cameraman,
was cruelly shot down in the Casbah area of Algiers as his wounded
colleague lay weeping by his side. Pasting “TV” stickers
on your car in Sarajevo was as much an invitation to the Serb
snipers above the city to shoot at journalists as it was a protection.
Where did we go wrong? I suspect the rot started in Vietnam.
Reporters have identified themselves with armies for decades.
In both World Wars, journalists worked in uniform. Dropping
behind enemy lines with US commandos did not spare an AP reporter
from a Nazi firing squad. But these were countries in open conflict,
reporters whose nations had officially declared war. Wearing
a uniform enabled journalists to claim the protection of the
Geneva Convention; in civilian clothes they could be shot as
spies. It was in Vietnam that reporters started wearing uniforms
and carrying weapons, and shooting those weapons at America’s
enemies, even though their country was not officially at war
and even when they could have carried out their duties without
wearing soldiers' clothes. In Vietnam, reporters were murdered
because they were reporters. This old habit of journalists to
be part of the story, to play an almost theatrical role in wars,
slowly took hold. When the Palestinians evacuated Beirut in
1982, I noticed that several French reporters were wearing Palestinians
kuffiah scarves. Israeli reporters turned up in occupied southern
Lebanon with pistols. Then in the 1991 Gulf war, American and
British television reporters started dressing up in military
costumes, appearing on screen, complete with helmets and military
camouflage fatigues, as if they were members of the 82nd Airborne
or the Hussars.
One American journalist even arrived in boots camouflaged with
painted leaves although a glance at any desert suggests that
this would not have served much purpose. In the Kurdish flight
into the mountains of northern Iraq more reporters could be
found wearing Kurdish clothes. In Pakistan and Afghanistan last
year, the same phenomenon occurred, reporters in Peshawar could
be seen wearing Pushtun hats. Why? No one could ever supply
me with an explanation. What on earth was CNN’s Walter
Rodgers doing in US Marine costume at the American camp outside
Kandahar? Mercifully, someone told him to take it off after
his first broadcast. Then Geraldo Rivera of Fox News arrived
in Jalalabad with a gun. He fully intended, he said, to kill
Osama bin Laden. It was the last straw. The reporters had now
become combatant. Perhaps we no longer care about our profession.
Maybe we’re all too quick to demean our own jobs, to sneer
at each other, to adopt the ridiculous title of “hacks”
when we should regard the job as foreign correspondent as a
decent, honourable profession. I was astounded last December
when an American newspaper headline announced that I had deserved
the beating I received at the hands of that Afghan crowd.
I had almost died but the article, by Mark Steyn, carried a
headline that a “multiculturalist (me) gets his due.”
My sin, of course, was to explain that the crowd had lost relatives
in America’s B-52 raids, that I would have done the same
in their place. That shameful, unethical headline, I should
add, appeared in Daniel Pearl’s own newspaper, The Wall
Street Journal. Can we do better? I think so. It’s not
that reporters in military costume – Rodgers in his silly
Marine helmet, Rivera clowning around with a gun, or even me
in my gascape a decade ago – helped to kill Daniel Pearl.
I was murdered by vicious men. But we are all of us – dressing
up in combatant’s cloths or adopting the national dress
of people – helping to erode the shield of neutrality and
decency which saved our lives in the past. If we don’t
stop now, how can we protest when next our colleagues are sized
by ruthless men who claim we are spies?
– Courtsy – The Independent |
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