Deathtrap Iraq

Three journalists of Al-Arabiya television, including a well-known woman correspondent, were kidnapped and killed while covering sectarian violence in Samarra, police and the Arabic-language channel said. The bodies of Atwar Bahjat, 30, and her cameraman and soundman were found early Thursday near the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, local law enforcement officials said. MURDERED: Bodies of Al...

21 February 2006 -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Pentagon is reviewing the U.S. military's practice of paying to plant stories in the Iraqi news media. In a speech last week, Rumsfeld said the controversial practice had been stopped. But he revised his words in a Pentagon news conference today, saying the practice is under review. The aim of the program, which has been...

NEW YORK: With five days to go until the latest deadline set by the kidnappers of abducted journalist Jill Carroll for their demands to be met, her employers at the Christian Science Monitor are downplaying the Feb. 26 date as the final chance to win her release. "We feel there can be a danger in getting fixated on a deadline of putting pressure on Jill's captors to hold to a deadline when in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday he was mistaken when he stated last week that the U.S. military had stopped paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles. Rumsfeld had said in a television interview on Friday that the U.S. military had ceased paying to place positive stories in Iraqi media after criticism in the U.S. Congress and press. Rumsfeld...

Jill Carroll, a 28-year-old freelance reporter on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, was abducted on January 7, 2006 in Baghdad. Carroll received her bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1999. In 2002, Carroll moved to Jordan — six months before the Iraq war started in March 2003 — "to learn as much about the region as possible before the...

LONDON (Reuters) - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq is among four main groups leading an insurgency against U.S.-led and Iraqi forces that owes its resilience partly to canny exploitation of the Internet, a report said on Wednesday. The International Crisis Group, a non-profit organization that monitors conflicts, analyzed insurgent publications and Internet postings to argue that the rebel...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Iraqi state television has aired video clips put together by the Christian Science Monitor urging the release of its reporter Jill Carroll, less than a week after her captors renewed threats to kill her, the newspaper said on Wednesday. The Boston-based newspaper said the broadcasts on al-Iraqiya television began airing on Tuesday and included interviews with Iraqis who say they...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi journalists were threatened, detained, tortured and killed -- victims of a system that tightly controlled what was written about the country's Baathist leader. The destruction of the Information Ministry -- one of the main instruments of Saddam-era censorship -- during the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Iraqi leader in March 2003 symbolically ended...

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll appeared in a video aired Thursday on a private Kuwaiti TV station, appealing in a calm, composed voice for her supporters to do whatever it takes to win her release "as quickly as possible." Carroll, wearing traditional Arab attire, said the date was Feb. 2, nearly a month after she was seized in Baghdad by armed men who killed her Iraqi...

In an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live Monday night, the network's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour passionately explained the difficulties TV journalists have in covering the conflict in Iraq. The hour-long interview show was dedicated on Monday night to the plight of journalists who have met harm in the country, most recently ABC's Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt, as well as...