What happens to war coverage if major news outlets decide to pull out of
covering the conflicts?
SCOTT ANDERSON: Well what happens is what has already happened in places
like Algeria and Chechnya. Algeria has been the site of one of the
bloodiest wars of the past 20, 30 years; over a hundred thousand people
have been killed in Algeria. No one knows about it, because over 60
journalists have been killed in Algeria --mostly local journalists. Both
sides have taken turns murdering journalists to ensure the story doesn't
get told. Chechnya, tiny little country, I think 16 or 17 journalists have
been killed in an area the size of Connecticut, mostly by Russian soldiers.
So-- what that does is it ensures that Chechnya's sort of off the radar. So
the Russians can then characterize the conflict there however they want to.
And you know I, I think if you think back on, on Desert Storm, there was so
little reporting from Baghdad and, and a lot of things that happened during
that war, because there weren't journalists there to report it, are, are
kind of lost in the ether. You know one thing that really struck me was
Timothy McVeigh. He was in this unit where they went in with armored
shovels, right after the bombing, and one of -- his job was to go into the,
the berms where the Iraqis - troops were - and basically bury them alive.
This was an official part of the, you know, the first wave of the American
Army going into Kuwait. I'd never heard that until--!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I've never heard that story.
SCOTT ANDERSON: Yeah! But it was a policy. Apparently it had been reported
somewhere in kind of a small, obscure place, but because you didn't have
journalists up at the front-- it's like - wow! You know - our - we have an
official policy of like burying people alive. Remarkable!
EXTRACT...
http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts_021403_battlefield.html
