"Major Variola (ret)" wrote: > I'd think that the troops would explain this to the reporters tagging > along as they confiscate all their transmitters before an op. I simply > wouldn't trust the reporters, even though they're toast too if someone mis-IFFs. > Its a lot more serious than not shutting off your cell phone on a > plane. Besides, I doubt the reporters have Iraq's FCC's clearance to > use those frequencies there, until we extend > the Little Powell's authority to that domain. :-)
Kate Adie's broadcast (which I heard on the BBC) was in the context of a discussion of "non-embedded" reporters. She claimed that all the best news from Gulf War 2 had been from people who weren't bedding with the military. The ones who are being threatened are the ones with the temerity to travel independently rather than under military orders. There was also a comment by Robert Fisk to the effect that (I can't remember the exact words): "There will be a war on. There is no law in a war, you can do whatever you can get away with." In an article I found online Fisk gives his rules of thumb for spotring compromised reporters: - Reporters who wear items of American or British military costume helmets, camouflage jackets, weapons, etc. - Reporters who say "we" when they are referring to the US or British military unit in which they are "embedded". - Those who use the words "collateral damage" instead of "dead civilians". - Those who commence answering questions with the words: "Well, of course, because of military security I can't divulge..." - Those who, reporting from the Iraqi side, insist on referring to the Iraqi population as "his" (ie Saddam's) people. - Journalists in Baghdad who refer to "what the Americans describe as Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses" rather than the plain and simple torture we all know Saddam practices. - Journalists reporting from either side who use the god-awful and creepy phrase "officials say" without naming, quite specifically, who these often lying "officials" are.
