JOURNALISTS: IRAQ IS STILL VERY DANGEROUS

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism surveyed journalists who are covering or have recently covered Iraq. Their survey had a 61% participation rate and has several interesting comments from the journalists.

...the journalists—most of them veteran war correspondents—describe conditions in Iraq as the most perilous they have ever encountered, and this above everything else is influencing the reporting. A majority of journalists surveyed (57%) report that at least one of their Iraqi staff had been killed or kidnapped in the last year alone—and many more are continually threatened. “Seven staffers killed since 2003, including three last July,” one bureau chief wrote with chilling brevity. “At least three have been kidnapped. All were freed.”

“The dangers can’t be overstated,” one print journalist wrote. “It’s been an ambush – two staff killed, one wounded – various firefights, and our ‘home’ has been rocked and mortared (by accident, I’m pretty sure). It’s not fun; it’s not safe, but I go back because it needs to be told.”

“Circumstances are so dangerous for American journalists,” a newspaper reporter responded, “that almost nothing can be reported in an ‘excellent’ fashion.”

“It has to be one of the most challenging countries to operate in,” wrote another print journalist. “From the lack of movement, the countless inhibiting factors, it’s constantly about trying to best put together the pieces of an inexplicable, intricate puzzle when you don’t have all the pieces ….”
The problem, journalists said, is often that many of the pieces lie in places too dangerous to reach.

Virtually all of the journalists assigned to Iraq live in Baghdad, yet the vast majority, 87%, consider at least half the city too dangerous for a Western journalist to travel in.
And nearly one in five (18%) say that during their most recent stay the entire city was too dangerous for travel.