Reporters in Iraq work around the limits of safety measures
The Jan. 7 kidnapping of Jill Carroll, like the severe wounding of ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff later that month, highlighted to the American public the array of dangers confronting journalists in Iraq.
But for reporters still in Baghdad, the events had little impact on the way they operate. They already had limited their movements and steadily increased their security. Yet, they still find ways to report the news.
''I think the notion that we cannot report at all has gotten overblown," said Jonathan Finer, a Baghdad reporter for The
With few exceptions, once the danger level spiked a year ago, most smaller Western news organizations closed their bureaus. Most freelancers stopped working independently in the country. Those who remain live outside the Green Zone in guarded hotels or compounds.
Larry Kaplow, the Cox Newspapers bureau chief in Baghdad, has spent one of the longest continuous reporting stints in Iraq; he moved to Baghdad in March 2003, before the US invasion that month, and has been based there since. He said that even the little remaining freedom reporters enjoyed vanished after the recent spate of kidnappings of foreigners in the last few months, including that of Carroll and two Iraqi TV reporters.
''Many areas of western Baghdad fell off-limits," Kaplow said. ''It cuts us off from a lot of the city. Also, we can't be exposed in public, like in a restaurant or on the street, for a long time."
He has watched working conditions tighten since 2003, when reporters drove relatively freely all over the country chronicling daily life, political upheaval, and a level of violence that in hindsight seems tame. Now bombings take place daily and foreign journalists almost never drive outside the city because the highways are too dangerous.
Newspaper and radio reporters tend to work with low-profile security; most have armed guards, travel with two cars, and avoid spending long periods of time interviewing Iraqis in public places, for fear of being spotted by potential kidnappers.
Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times Baghdad bureau chief, said he avoids making appointments or lingering on the street, but like many reporters still travels extensively in dangerous parts of Baghdad, including the western part of the city where Carroll was kidnapped and the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, where other journalists have been taken hostage.
Yesterday, Daragahi reported at the scene of Wednesday's massacre at an electrical store. ''I stayed for 20 minutes interviewing witnesses before some scary-looking guys showed up and we left," he said.
The three major news services -- Reuters, The Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse -- provide comprehensive reporting and rely on vast networks of local Iraqi reporters and cameramen.
Reuters employs 70 Iraqi journalists and several dozen news assistants around Iraq to supplement the work of its seven expatriate employees, whose movements are largely constrained to the office, the Green Zone, and travel with US-led occupation forces, said Alastair Macdonald, bureau chief.
''It's hard to see us reducing staffing any time soon, given the amount of international interest in where the country is headed," he said.
Unlike print reporters, who can dress like locals and meet people inside shops or in houses not visible from the street, television reporters have to use cameras and sound engineers. They try to avoid working on the street or in public spaces, but when they do they use visible, armed security guards.
''It is perhaps the most difficult time I have seen yet to cover this story," said Richard Engel, an NBC reporter who also has been in Iraq since March 2003.
Beyond the kidnappings and car bombings, which have long been risks, Engel said the growing sectarian killing has made Iraqi media employees more vulnerable than ever before.
''It is hard to know who to trust and our local staff are now also targets," Engel said. ''That limits our ability to get information directly from the Iraqis because for some time now our locals have been our main eyes and ears on the streets."
Since the conflict began in 2003, 91 journalists and media support workers have been killed, most of them Iraqis, according to a tally kept by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. That makes the war in Iraq deadlier for reporters than any previous one, including Vietnam and World War II, according to the group.
Reporters sharply increased their security in October 2004, when several reporters were kidnapped and released. Two organizations moved their offices inside the Green Zone.
Another escalation in risk came in late 2005, when major suicide bombs targeted the Palestine Hotel complex and the Hamra Hotel, where the majority of Western news organizations were based, both outside the fortified Green Zone.
After a flurry of coverage of the December 2005 elections, many organizations opted to send reporters less frequently. Some, including The Boston Globe, recently closed their offices in the country in the face of the growing physical risks for reporters and local staff, and the high costs of maintaining security.
More journalists now travel into the country occasionally on temporary assignments, and they often accompany the US military because of the dangers of moving around independently. Still, Woodruff was wounded when the convoy he was traveling in was hit by a roadside bomb.
Some organizations have relied on freelancers in Iraq rather than send staff reporters. Some, like The Christian Science Monitor, rely on both. Carroll was working on a freelance basis for the Monitor when she was seized.
''I believe the paper will try to keep this bureau here as long as the Iraq story is important, and it's obvious that that will be for many years," said Edward Wong, a veteran Baghdad reporter for The New York Times.
Cambanis, the Globe's Middle East co-bureau chief, has covered Iraq for the Globe for the past three years. 