A Eulogy for Journalists   

Dying to Tell the Story The Iraq War and the Media: A Tribute

International News Safety Institute
226 pages; $22

A Times of London story called the high number of journalists killed during the war in Iraq "the worst catalogue of deaths in so short a time in media history." That stark reality is underscored in the opening paragraphs of a book dedicated to them and their colleagues in the press corps who served as eyewitnesses to the conflict.

"One of the most damning indictments of the media profession is that reporters provide the ink and others provide the blood," wrote Chris Cramer in the foreword of "Dying to Tell the Story," published by the International News Safety Institute, a coalition of leading media organizations headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

Cramer, managing director of CNN International, reminds readers that at least 16 members of the profession "provided both the ink and their blood" in Iraq during March, April and May 2003.

This is a book for insiders, written with passion and intimacy to eulogize fallen comrades and probe deeply into the media's role in covering global conflicts. There is a heavy emphasis on safety issues, part of a new movement within the industry to prepare journalists physically and psychologically for the perils they face in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (see "Preparing for Battle," July/August 2002).

The power of the book comes from the voices of correspondents on the scene, describing the sights, smells and sounds of the horror they encountered. For them, nothing was more agonizing than hearing the screams of a wounded colleague or cradling the body of a blood-soaked reporter in their arms.

Kaveh Golestan, an Iranian freelance cameraman on assignment in Iraq for the BBC, died on April 2 when his party drove into a minefield in Kurdish territory. Reporter Jim Muir, working with Golestan, recalled the incident: "His upper half was intact, but everything below was obscenely shattered.... It was as though his lower half had melted into a pool of blood," Muir wrote. "I felt an immediate pang of guilt. I had driven Kaveh all the way from Tehran in my car, and into a minefield."

The roster of journalists wounded and killed in Iraq is a grim benchmark for a profession struggling to sort out how to cover a brand of 21st century warfare that has sparked unsettling trends and concerns. One chapter deals with the thorny issue of hiring trained killers as bodyguards in combat zones. CNN's Brent Sadler tells of an incident where an ex-soldier with the British Special Forces saved his life in Tikrit by firing at attackers. The bodyguard's weapon has been framed and hangs on Sadler's office wall in Beirut as a reminder of the close call.

In Iraq, audiences watched media "embeds" report news under fire alongside coalition troops. This up-close journalism, a turnabout from the 2001 conflict in Afghanistan, where the media were shut out, raised questions about reporters being "in bed" with the Pentagon.

Michael Kelly, an editor at large for The Atlantic Monthly and a Washington Post columnist, was traveling with U.S. forces when he was killed during an assault on the Baghdad airport. Terry Lloyd, a 20-year veteran for Britain's ITV, was a "unilateral," operating on his own when he died as his vehicle came under fire in southern Iraq.

The eulogies for 16 lost to land mines, bombs, gunfire, illness and traffic accidents tug at the heart, but the book's main weakness comes from a lack of continuity in the tributes and a need for stronger editing.

The first chapter is dedicated to Australian freelance cameraman Paul Moran, 39, who died when a suicide bomber struck in northern Iraq on March 22. Moran was the first media casualty of the war. Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporter Eric Campbell, working with Moran at the time, tells how, bleeding from his own wounds, he searched for his colleague.

"Paul could only have died instantly. He was terribly injured," wrote Campbell. "I froze as I stood beside him, knowing I should do something, eventually kneeling down and holding his arm and saying his name, but feeling ashamed that I had survived and he was dead."

The book's final chapter, appropriately titled "As the Smoke Clears, the Pain Goes On," is by Dr. Anthony Feinstein, a Canadian psychiatrist. Feinstein, along with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in the United States, works to help media professionals deal with the emotional impact of writing about violence.

Two seminal questions are posed in a chapter on Tareq Ayyoub, a correspondent for the Arab television network Al-Jazeera who was killed when a coalition bomb fell on the station's Baghdad office. "Was it worth it? Is anybody's life worth a story?" As the author of that eulogy notes, "These thoughts will linger for some time to come."