Deathtrap Iraq

The Pentagon's new effort to influence media coverage of the war in Iraq is an example of how governments react when a war is not going too well. They begin to think it is not the war that is the problem, but the presentation of it. The media, being the messengers, get the blame, not the message itself. The plan, detailed in a memo seen by the Associated Press news agency, is for a rapid response...

New York, October 30, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Sunday’s murder in central Baghdad of a presenter and a driver for the Iraqi state television channel Atyaf. Unidentified gunmen killed Naqshin Hamma Rashid, 30, and her driver Anis Qassem as the two were driving to work near Haifa Street in the morning, according to CPJ sources. Rashid, a Kurd who was also known by...

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is brushing off a request for more information and a decision on an Associated Press photographer held for six months in Iraq without formal charges. In a letter to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, does not provide details about why Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein remains at a U.S. run prison camp. The letter repeats the military...

(RSF/IFEX) - With a total of 48 journalists and media assistants killed in cold blood since the start of January, 2006 is already the deadliest year for the Iraqi press since the start of the war in March 2003, Reporters Without Borders said, condemning targeted violence against media. "Journalists are being attacked more often than Iraqi politicians, who work in the Green Zone where the...

NEW YORK — The Pentagon has brushed off a request from a journalist organization seeking more information and a decision on Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer held for six months in Iraq without formal charges. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, in a letter to the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not provide details about why Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein continues to be held...

New York, October 13, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the finding of a British inquest that ITN journalist Terry Lloyd was unlawfully killed by U.S. troops in southern Iraq three years ago. CPJ called on the U.S. military to reopen its own investigation into the shooting. A coroner in Oxford ruled today that Lloyd, a veteran correspondent with Britain's Independent...

OXFORD, England, Oct 13 (Reuters) - One of Britain's most experienced journalists was unlawfully killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, a British inquest into his death ruled on Friday, prompting calls for the perpetrators to be tried for war crimes. Veteran war correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, who worked for British television company ITN, was killed in March 2003 in southern Iraq as he reported from the...

A new study has generated heavy news coverage with its finding that over 650,000 Iraqis have died as a direct or indirect result of the March 2003 US-led invasion. It has also created widespread controversy, largely because this total is far higher than any previous estimate, which creates political problems for President Bush and other supporters of the war. The study, which appeared in the...

New York, October 11, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists today demanded that Iraqi authorities release Al-Hayat correspondent Kalshan al-Bayati, who was detained in Tikrit three weeks ago. Al-Bayati has been held without charge since she went to the security forces headquarters in Tikrit on September 18 to retrieve a personal computer confiscated during a raid on her home, according to CPJ...

New York, October 10, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the reported murder of an Iraqi journalist, whose body was identified in the Baghdad morgue today, a week after he had been kidnapped by unidentified gunmen. The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, an Iraqi press freedom organization, said the body of Azad Muhammad Hussein, 29, a reporter for the Iraqi Islamic Party-owned...