Reporters in Iraq work around the limits of safety measures
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | March 31, 2006
The Jan. 7 kidnapping of Jill Carroll, like the severe wounding of ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff later that month, highlighted to the American public the array of dangers confronting journalists in Iraq.
But for reporters still in Baghdad, the events had little impact on the way they operate. They already had limited their movements and steadily increased their security. Yet, they still find ways to report the news.
''I think the notion that we cannot report at all has gotten overblown," said Jonathan Finer, a Baghdad reporter for The Washington Post. ''We are not housebound. We just have to be careful and discreet and take calculated risks, not stupid ones."
With few exceptions, once the danger level spiked a year ago, most smaller Western news organizations closed their bureaus. Most freelancers stopped working independently in the country. Those who remain live outside the Green Zone in guarded hotels or compounds.
Larry Kaplow, the Cox Newspapers bureau chief in Baghdad, has spent one of the longest continuous reporting stints in Iraq; he moved to Baghdad in March 2003, before the US invasion that month, and has been based there since. He said that even the little remaining freedom reporters enjoyed vanished after the recent spate of kidnappings of foreigners in the last few months, including that of Carroll and two Iraqi TV reporters.
''Many areas of western Baghdad fell off-limits," Kaplow said. ''It cuts us off from a lot of the city. Also, we can't be exposed in public, like in a restaurant or on the street, for a long time."
He has watched working conditions tighten since 2003, when reporters drove relatively freely all over the country chronicling daily life, political upheaval, and a level of violence that in hindsight seems tame.
Now bombings take place daily and foreign journalists almost never drive outside the city because the highways are too dangerous.
Newspaper and radio reporters tend to work with low-profile security; most have armed guards, travel with two cars, and avoid spending long periods of time interviewing Iraqis in public places, for fear of being spotted by potential kidnappers. . .
Since the conflict began in 2003, 91 journalists and media support workers have been killed, most of them Iraqis, according to a tally kept by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. That makes the war in Iraq deadlier for reporters than any previous one, including Vietnam and World War II, according to the group. . . . [40 journalists have been kidnapped]
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