Barely a Blip on the Media’s Radar Screen   

The story could have made headlines--Iraqi journalists accuse U.S. military of abuse similar to Abu Ghraib." But when the Reuters and NBC employees first went public with the allegations in May 2004, few media outlets chose to cover the story, leaving it to Reuters to publicize the allegations.

Journalist advocates say the American media routinely give scant coverage to illegal, dangerous and sometimes fatal incidents involving journalists in Iraq. The reasons, they say, are unclear, but the result is the same: The public is in the dark.

Tala Dowlatshahi is the New York-based U.S. representative for Reporters Without Borders. She argues that journalists, especially Iraqis, are routinely targeted by insurgents and others who oppose the U.S. presence in the country. But, she says, those stories generate little interest.

"The underscoring moral idea behind all this is that the local correspondents, specifically people in the grass roots, local reporters who are not embedded, who don't have access to resources, are statistically the ones who are under fire, and we don't even hear about those," she says.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 41 journalists in Iraq have been killed and two dozen others abducted since 2003. Joel Campagna, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Middle East, says last year more than 60 percent of the journalists killed were Iraqis, a big increase from 2003, when only two Iraqis were among the 13 correspondents who died. As local journalists have assumed a greater role in the coverage, he says, they are also facing much greater risks. "If you're a local correspondent, there are possible threats from insurgents who have targeted Iraqis who are associated with the international presence in Iraq, including the media," Campagna says.

As for the specific case of the Reuters and NBC employees, the New York Times was one of the few newspapers that reported on the incident in depth. Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner says the story was worth pursuing, especially in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

But he says Times reporters had problems getting to the Iraqis, three of whom lived in Fallujah, and gathering background information about the incident. "Logistics were a big problem at the time," Bronner says. Between the lengthy Reuters' transcripts of interviews with the men, "the fact that there were four separate Iraqis..it was impossible at that time to go to Fallujah"--this was a difficult story to pursue.

It took a few weeks to secure interviews with the men. Eventually, instead of trying to get to Fallujah, Times reporters had the three Reuters employees--two cameramen and a driver--meet them in Baghdad. The Times' story ran October 14 on page A10.

Other newspapers, including the Washington Post, New York's Daily News and Raleigh's News & Observer, ran short stories mostly based on Reuters' dispatches and statements. PBS and CNN reported on January 2, 2004, that the journalists had been detained. CNN included the incident in a subsequent report on journalists in Iraq.

William Powers, a National Journal columnist who covers the media and politics, says the story briefly appeared on his radar but was overshadowed by Abu Ghraib. (The story of abuses of detainees at the military prison broke just before the Iraqis made their tale of mistreatment public.)

"I don't feel like I should say the story should be huge and we forgot about it" if the accusations haven't been confirmed, Powers says. But given the seriousness of the charges, he adds, the story deserved more attention.

Poynter Institute Senior Scholar Roy Peter Clark says with news breaking daily in Iraq, newsrooms may be unable to devote the resources and time to pursue such a story.

Might the press be hesitant to cover the hardships of journalists? Bronner says he doesn't think so, but adds, "You do worry about becoming sort of obsessively interested in your own and worry is your interest in it greater than it would be if it were some other person... But I think we've got it in a reasonable sense of perspective."

Powers calls the reticence by journalists to "turn themselves into profiles in courage" a healthy modesty. But the Reuters and NBC employees were not "standard American journalists in the line of fire," he says. They were, in the case of the NBC cameraman, working for American media. "These are nationals making claims that on the face of it are pretty shocking."

Journalist advocates wonder if coverage of the allegations would have been more extensive had the employees been Americans, instead of Iraqis.

If former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw were taken hostage, Dowlatshahi says, "then it really hits home that this is a horrendous situation and [becoming] worse and worse and worse." Like any audience, American audiences identify with someone "who looks like them and is one of their own."

Foreign editors at some of the nation's largest papers did not return calls seeking comment about their coverage, or the lack thereof, of the Iraqis' accusations. Since the Times' October article and a December piece in Editor & Publisher on Reuters' efforts to attract media attention to the episode, the military released its final word on the investigation in March--saying it would not reopen the inquiry. Reuters continues to push for a new probe.

Unlike Abu Ghraib, no pictures have surfaced to lend credence to the Iraqis' claims. "The pictures mean so much in terms of magnification of news stories," says Clark. Pictures can provide "that undeniable evidence that provokes feelings of outrage."

For more on the journalist's accusations, See "A Grim Foreshadowing?," June/July 2005 by Jill Carroll.