Dangers of reporting Iraqi poll

By Peter Feuilherade
BBC Monitoring

Violence in Iraq has been increasing ahead of the election

The dream that Iraq after Saddam Hussein would have the freest media in the Middle East survived only a few months after the war in 2003.

Media watchdogs and groups promoting journalists' safety warn that Iraq is the world's most dangerous assignment.

More than 40 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, were killed in the line of duty in 2004.

After a French reporter went missing two weeks ago, ministers told French journalists to stay out of Iraq.

Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi translator, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, have not been seen since they left their Baghdad hotel earlier this month.

Several other Western governments have warned that there is an increased likelihood of journalists being attacked or kidnapped during the election.

However, France's chief news editors have said they will continue to cover events there on the ground.

Curbs

The risks have not deterred many international media outlets from sending their top journalists to report on the elections taking place on Sunday.

But most Western journalists are forced to operate under severe restrictions.

They are reluctant to approach ordinary Iraqis in the street because of the security risks, and unable to leave Baghdad without the help of the US military.

We can't go beyond Baghdad and we can barely move within Baghdad Martin Fletcher The Times

"During the war you could go and talk to people, with government minders in tow, but at least you were able to get a flavour of what was really happening," recalled the BBC Middle East correspondent Paul Wood.

Two years later, "on our own steam we can't go beyond Baghdad and we can barely move within Baghdad", the Times foreign news editor Martin Fletcher told the French news agency AFP.

To lessen the risks of kidnapping or murder, most foreign media staff work from the relative safety of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone or heavily guarded hotels and villas, and use Iraqi stringers to conduct interviews and provide pictures.

The British journalist Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent on 17 January, derided this approach as "hotel journalism", and argued that a lack of sources was compromising reporting.

"Rarely, if ever, has a war been covered by reporters in so distant and restricted a way," Fisk wrote, adding: "Why do not more journalists report on the restrictions under which they operate?"

Climate of fear

A leaflet circulated at the end of 2004 in areas around Falluja, west of Baghdad, offered money to anyone giving information on Iraqi journalists, translators and drivers working with foreign companies or newspapers.

Ali Hasan of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which has been helping to train journalists in Iraq, summed up the plight of the Iraqi media when he wrote with regret that the climate of violence had forced the IWPR to close its Baghdad office at the start of this year.

Aubenas and al-Saadi have been missing since 5 January

"We feel defeated and we are frustrated... We fear that we will be branded as the spies and collaborators of the occupation. There are many whom we fear: The Board of Muslim Clerics, the foreign Jihadis, Muqtada al-Sadr, Zarqawi's people, and finally Saddam's henchmen," Hasan wrote.

As the Western and Arabic-language satellite networks make plans to cover news conferences in the Green Zone and set up live satellite trucks at polling sites, they will be on high alert against the risk of car bombs and suicide attacks on polling day.

A security briefing posted on the International News Safety Institute website warned that the large number of media staff in Iraq, particularly Baghdad, to cover the elections, will raise their target profile, particularly if some of those deployed are not overly familiar with the current situation on the ground.

"Media personnel are recommended to maintain a low profile and demonstrate caution," it added.

For Iraqi journalists, the risks will continue after the vote is over and their foreign colleagues have moved on.