The ugly truth is this: U.S. forces are targeting journalists. What is more, there is a common thread: The journalists killed by U.S. forces have been mostly Arabs who were reporting on places or incidents that the U.S. does not have want the world to see: military vehicles in flames, helicopters shot down, fierce resistance against the U.S. invaders, and civilian deaths.
Of course, the "embedded" U.S. media has scarcely covered this story.
Many of the attacks have been spectacular: launching missiles on a photographer, a tank attack on the Palestine Hotel where more than 100 "non-embed" journalists maintained their offices. Yet the Pentagon has not disciplined a single soldier for the killing of a journalist in Iraq. Most of the incidents have been labeled "self-defense" or "mistakes" and some have been classified as "justified," like the killing of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana who was shot near Abu Ghraib prison when soldiers said his camera (a shoe-box sized rectangular object) mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (a four foot long pole-shaped object).
In some cases the U.S. has admitted targeting journalists. Reuters freelancer Dhia Najim was killed by U.S. fire while filming resistance fighters in November 2004. "We did kill him," an unnamed military official told the New York Times. "He was out with the bad guys. He was there with them, they attacked, and we fired back and hit him."
Meanwhile, here at home, the White House embeds fake journalists across the country and right-wing bloggers drive Eason Jordan, one of the most powerful executives in the cable news business, from his job for merely suggesting that there's a problem in Iraq.
The Nation - Shooting the Messenger
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