Iraq

BAGHDAD, March 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is offering new safeguards to journalists in Iraq to prevent a repeat of lengthy detentions suffered by several reporters last year. Abandoning a policy that denied journalists special status -- and under which three Reuters staff were jailed for up to eight months -- the general in charge of detentions said such arrests would now be treated as...

Murder has overtaken crossfire and other acts of war as the leading cause of work-related deaths among journalists and media support workers in Iraq, and local journalists are far and away the most vulnerable to attack, a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found. CPJ research, compiled for the third anniversary of the conflict, shows that 67 journalists and 24 media...

Gunmen assassinated the editor of an Iraqi weekly near his home in Baghdad, police and colleagues said on Tuesday, in the third killing of an Iraqi journalist in a week, Reuters has reported. ASSAULT UNABATED: Iraqis carry the coffin of Amjad Hameed, a senior Iraqi state television editor, during his funeral in Baghdad March 11, 2006. Gunmen assassinated Hameed, along with his driver, on Saturday...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has said that the failure of the United States to respond to calls for independent investigation of cases where journalists and media staff have been killed by US soldiers is encouraging a culture of impunity in the killing of media staff. CRUEL JUSTICE: José Couso's funeral procession. José Couso, who worked for the Spanish television network...

A cartoon appearing in the al-Sabah daily on March 2 highlights an increasingly prominent feature of Iraq's post-Saddam media. Depicting the malign hand of a writer (with serpent like fingers) using Iraqi blood as ink, the cartoon tries to expose the sectarian affiliations and motives of many Iraqi journalists and reporters. For al-Sabah, the Iraqi media, far from trying to reverse the descent...

Gunmen killed the director of Iraq's public television channel and his driver Saturday, the second killing this month of a figure who shapes broadcast news coverage of the country's sectarian strife, agencies reported quoting police sources. BEREAVED AND WIDOWED: The wife of Amjad Hameed, a senior Iraqi state television editor, weeps during his funeral in Baghdad March 11, 2006. Gunmen...

The Christian Science Monitor has reinvigorated its Iraqi media campaign to free journalist Jill Carroll, who was on assignment for the paper when she was kidnapped on Jan. 7, 2006. The effort is focused on reminding Iraqis of her situation as she marks two months in captivity. Television stations with national and local reach in Iraq are broadcasting public-service announcements in Arabic that...

The Ministry of Defence has formally stated for the first time that the British military will never deliberately target journalists in conflict zones, but admits that mistakes do happen. After mounting pressure as the media death toll in Iraq climbs, the MoD has officially recognised the issue of safety for journalists. The MoD's "green book", which outlines arrangements with the media, now...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military will continue to pay Iraqi media to publish reports favorable to American forces following an investigation into the controversial practice, the top U.S. general in Iraq said on Friday. Army Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. forces there, told reporters in a teleconference from Iraq that the investigation by a Navy admiral ordered by Casey "found that we...

The International News Safety Institute (INSI) has pleaded with journalists to resist calls to carry guns in Iraq following the gruesome murders of three more news staff. The Iraq correspondent for Al Arabiya, Atwar Bahjat, cameraman Khaled Mahmoud Al Falahi and technician Adnan Khairallah were shot by unidentified gunmen near Samarra on February 23 as they covered the attack on the holy sites in...