Journalists Now an Endangered Species

The international War Correspondent, once a figure of glamour and derring-do, is rapidly becoming an endangered species. Close on 1 000 journalists and their helpers have been killed world-wide while covering international upheavals in the past decade.

In fact the number of journalists who lost their lives went up by 244 percent over the five year period up to 2008. Some decades ago the hero of the popular movie Roman Holiday was Gregory Peck, playing a war correspondent who pursues a beautiful princess, Audrey Hepburn. A more recent movie with a journalist as its hero, reflecting the radical changes which have hyped the pressures on the media, told how Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal was captured and beheaded on camera by Al Qaeda.

With the advent of fanatical religious terrorism the conventions of decency have vanished. People going to work in a bus or families sitting at lunch in a café are slain by suicide bombers.

Media workers trying to do their jobs in the midst of this cruel chaos inevitably become victims as well.

The US led invasion of Iraq in2003 resulted in a spike in media casualties. Of the 47 reporters killed in Iraq in 2007, most were "deliberately targeted", according to the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

In no country have more journalists been killed than in Iraq, says the group. Other deadly countries for journalists include Somalia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and latterly Afghanistan and the Middle East where the human instinct for freedom has erupted in uprisings against entrenched injustice.

But journalists are not only losing their lives while doing their professional duty. They are losing their liberty and their human dignity.

Four New York Times staffers, three men and a woman, have just been released after being held for a week in Libya by Muammar Gaddafi's thugs. During their captivity they were beaten and threatened with being decapitated and shot.

Lynsey Addario, the Pulitzer Prize-winning woman photographer with the group, told how Gaddafi's men had groped her and beaten her. One Libyan man punched her in the face and laughed and when she began to cry he laughed even more heartily. One man grabbed her breasts as part of a process of sexual harassment which continued for 48 hours.

As she was being driven away, one of her captors repeatedly stroked her head. At first she thought he was displaying some tenderness towards her plight but then she realized that "while he was caressing my head in this sick way he was saying 'Tonight you are going to die.'"

The life of a war correspondent has always been hazardous, of course. It is the nature of the job. John Simpson, the renowned World Affairs Editor of the BBC, was famously wounded when he came under "friendly fire" from American warplanes while he was accompanying a convoy of US special forces and Kurdish fighters in Iraq.

His coverage of that event was vivid, dramatic - a classic of reportage.

Moments after being attacked, he broadcast live by satellite telephone on the BBC news channel News 24.

"I've counted 10 or 12 bodies around us. They are Americans. It was an American plane that dropped a bomb right beside us. I saw it land about 10 metres away. This is a scene from hell here. All the vehicles are on fire. There are bodies burning around me, there are bodies lying around, there are bits of bodies on the ground. This is a really bad own goal by the Americans."

Simpson had been looking up at two circling American planes and actually saw one drop the bomb.

"As I was looking at them -I know this must sound extraordinary but I assure you it is true - I saw the bomb coming out of one of the planes. And I saw it as it came down beside me.

"It was painted red and white. It crashed into the ground about 10 or 12 metres away from me. It took the lower legs off Kamaran, our translator. I got shrapnel in parts of my body. I would have got a chunk of shrapnel in my spine but I had been wearing a flak jacket and the shrapnel was buried deep in the Kevlar when I checked it."

Simpson is still our there on the front line, reporting from Libya.

A brave South African news photographer, Ken Oosterbroek, was not as lucky as Simpson in the heat of battle.

During a period of serious political and tribal unrest in South Africa, just before the first free elections in 1994, Oosterbroek had displayed great bravery by inserting himself between warring factions such as the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party and the Xhosa dominated African National Congress, obtaining stunning photographs of social upheaval and political violence.

He was a colleague of mine on The Star, South Africa's biggest national daily newspaper.

The South African Police had desperately tried to strengthen their manpower by hiring hundreds of new policemen to form a kind of militia to curb violence during the election hysteria. They were barely trained, raw recruits who were mainly illiterate and had no background of experience to prepare them for the unrestrained violence of tribal conflict.

Oosterbroek had placed himself in a good vantage point to photograph a crowd of ANC supporters. What he didn't know was that behind him the newly formed rabble of police militia had taken up position.

As the ANC supporters surged forward in political fervour some fearful members of the police militia suddenly opened fire with live rounds. One bullet struck Oosterbroek in the back, severing his spine and killing him instantly.

Television news showed Oosterbroek being stretchered away from the scene, his head hanging limply at the awkward angle of death. In a tragic irony, the South African public witnessed Oosterbroek's final departure--a man "killed in action"-in the kind of dramatic imagery which had brought him fame. Only this time he was the subject.

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So how do you keep media people safe? There is no simple answer. Concept Tactical Worldwide has been asked to provide security for journalists but after careful examination decided to decline the request for physical protection in the form of armed bodyguards alone. This would have been counter-productive, heightening risk rather that minimizing it. Instead, we offered expert advice and tactical awareness training and intelligence- where danger lay, how to obtain help from locals rather than relying on foreigners and how to minimize risk in hostile environments by always being tactically aware of immediate surroundings.

So, the game has changed and nowadays there are no rules. Journalists are no longer treated with respect, as impartial observers. They are targets, expendable in the deadly game of propaganda.

As the Committee to Protect Journalists has observed: "At a time when technology is changing the way people around the world gather and receive information, when international news organizations are cutting back and closing bureaus, freelancers, local reporters and online journalists are more important then ever."

In an ever more complex world in which national disasters such as earthquakes and floods are occurring more frequently, the profession of news correspondent has become more hazardous than ever ---and at a time when it has never been more important to find and tell the truth.

Roy Christie is a veteran South African journalist who spent time in Fleet Street on The Daily Mail and The Sun before returning to South Africa where he joined the Sunday Times and later The Star -- the country's biggest-selling publications. He has worked in every journalistic discipline -- among them courts, regional and national politics, crime and entertainment. For 20 years he was editor of The Star's hugely successful arts and entertainment tabloid, Tonight! and is now Director of Media Communications for Concept Tactical Worldwide.He has authored several books, the most recent The Givers of Light, which has a metaphysical theme. Visit the Concept Tactical Worldwide website at http://www.concepttactical.com.

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