Dode journalisten en dode 'links'
Henk Ruyssenaars - 12.03.2004 19:43
Hoe en waarom gaan journalisten dood, wie doet het en hoe doen ze het als ze dat willen ?
FPF Extra over internationale journalistiek:
TODAY : CPJ RELEASES ATTACKS ON THE PRESS IN 2003
Annual survey documents changing press freedom landscape: 36 journalists
killed; 136 jailed at year’s end; China world’s leading jailer of journalists for fifth year in a row.
 http://www.cpj.org/attacks03/pages03/AOP11mar04na.html#more
Remember the warning by the senior chief correspondent of the BBC - Kate Adie ?
"PENTAGON THREATENS TO KILL INDEPENDENT REPORTERS IN IRAQ"
Who is ? BBC - Kate Adie - http://tinyurl.com/79lz
" The BBC's chief news correspondent became one of the best-known faces on
television for her reporting from the major wars of recent years.
They include the Gulf War, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Rwanda, China and Sierra Leone."
---------------------------------------------------------
THE OFFICIAL LINK TO THIS INFORMATION IS"KILLED"
PENTAGON THREATENS TO KILL INDEPENDENT REPORTERS IN IRAQ
10th March, 2003 by Fintan Dunne, Editor http://www.GuluFuture.com
The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie.
In an interview with Irish radio, Ms. Adie said that questioned about the
consequences of such potentially fatal actions, a senior Pentagon officer had said: "Who cares.. ..They've been warned."
According to Ms. Adie, who twelve years ago covered the last Gulf War, the
Pentagon attitude is: "entirely hostile to the the free spread of information."
"I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on-the-spot reporting, as the war occurs," she told Irish national broadcaster, Tom McGurk on the RTE1 Radio "Sunday Show."
Ms. Adie made the startling revelations during a discussion of media freedom issues in the likely upcoming war in Iraq. She also warned that the Pentagon is vetting journalists according to their stance on the war, and intends to take control of US journalists' satellite equipment --in order to control access to the airwaves.
Another guest on the show, war author Phillip Knightley, reported that the
Pentagon has also threatened they: "may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side."
Transcript follows below.
Tom McGurk:
" Now, Kate Adie, you join us from the BBC in London. Thank you very much
for going to all this trouble on a Sunday morning to come and join us.
I suppose you are watching with a mixture of emotions this war beginning to happen, because you are not going to be covering it."
Kate Adie:
" Oh I will be. And what actually appalls me is the difference between twelve years ago and now. I've seen a complete erosion of any kind of acknowledgment that reporters should be able to report as they witness."
" The Americans... and I've been talking to the Pentagon ...take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information."
" I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks --that is the television signals out of... Bhagdad, for example-- were detected by any planes ...electronic media... mediums, of the military above Bhagdad...they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists ..' Who cares! ' said.. [inaudible] .."
Tom McGurk:
"...Kate ...sorry Kate ..just to underline that. Sorry to interrupt you. Just to explain for our listeners. Uplinks is where you have your own satellite telephone method of distributing information."
Kate Adie:
" The telephones and the television signals."
Tom McGurk:
" And they would be fired on? "
Kate Adie:
" Yes. They would be 'targeted down,' said the officer."
Tom McGurk: " Extraordinary ! "
Kate Adie: " Shameless! "
He said: ' Well... they know this ...they've been warned.'
This is threatening freedom of information, before you even get to a war.
The second thing is there was a massive news blackout imposed.
In the last Gulf war, where I was one of the pool correspondents with the British Army. We effectively had very, very light touch when it came to any kind of censorship.
We were told that anything which was going to endanger troops lives which we
understood we shouldn't broadcast. But other than that, we were relatively free.
Unlike our American colleagues, who immediately left their pool, after about
48 hours, having just had enough of it.
And this time the Americans are: a) Asking journalists who go with them,
whether they are... have feelings against the war. And therefore if you have views that are skeptical, then you are not to be acceptable.
Secondly, they are intending to take control of the Americans technical
equipment ...those uplinks and satellite phones I was talking about. And control access to the airwaves.
And then on top of everything else, there is now a blackout (which was imposed, during the last war, at the beginning of the war), ...ordered by one Mr. Dick Cheney, who is in charge of this.
I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on-the-spot reporting,
as the war occurs. You will get it later.
[ end BBC-Kate Adie ]
*********************************************
AND HERE IS HOW IT CAN BE DONE :
URL-US-Mil: http://tinyurl.com/3d2xx
Excerpt: "Tony Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Projects Research
Agency, said Wednesday that the Pentagon also will use in Iraq a new
electronic-detection device that could help pinpoint cell phones or pagers, which sometimes are used to detonate homemade bombs aimed at U.S. troops.
"They're not going to be 100 percent solutions," he said, but if they help even a little bit they may slow the anti-American resistance in Iraq." [ ENDQUOTE ]
Url: http-//tinyurl.com/3d2xx
So if you're against killing people, better watch out you're not killed !
Henk Ruyssenaars
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION http://tinyurl.com/3crhn
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars http://tinyurl.com/mif6
The Netherlands
 fpf@chello.nl
The Dutch author worked for 4 decades for international media as foreign
correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East.
Seeing that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism !
Help the troops come home: we need them to fight our 'governments'.
HR
 E-Mail: fpf@chello.nl  Website: http://tinyurl.com/2rhqa
|
