by Eve Stenson
To the casual observer, it might look like the Bush administration doesn’t like journalists much. And not just in the uncooperative, silent-treatment, beat-em-off-with-a-stick sort of way that Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has been so fond of ever since the President took office. That was just tough love. But now, they’ve moved to the next level. Now, they’ve started killing them off.
How else do you explain that the ones that got taken out on Tuesday? According to Editor and Publisher, a total of three cameramen – one from Reuters, one from a Spanish television station, and one from Iraq’s Al-Jazeera – were killed by US fire, all in the same day. I mean, sure they were in Baghdad; and sure there’s bombing going on there. But if you look at it statistically, what are the chances that, of all the people in that city, there’s such a high percent of journalists— . . . well, then again . . . Maybe we ought to look at it another way.
Regardless, no matter how densely foreign reporters are populating Iraq’s capital at the moment, isn’t the US supposed to be able to tell the difference between enemy troops and casual observers? It’s not like there were any reporters helping out the Iraqi— . . . well, then again . . .
All right, so maybe bombing selective reporters *cough*Geraldo*cough* wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world. It would at least have been understandable; I’d been tempted to do the same myself in the past, and it’s not like I was in charge of troops whose locations he was broadcasting for all to see.
But with that particular reporter out of the way (though, unfortunately, not permanently), there was really no reason to go and start targeting the rest of them.
Of course, the White House denies that this was their intent. "The suggestion that somehow the United States would have somehow deliberately attacked journalists is absolutely false," Editor and Publisher quoted Vice President Dick Cheney as saying, "You’d have to be an idiot to believe that." And any rumors that, upon hearing these words, the President expressed surprise and indignation, respectively, are no doubt merely idle speculation.
As, of course, would be the rumor that Fleischer was heard humming "Another One Bites the Dust" Tuesday evening.
When you really think about it, though, you probably have to believe them. With all due respect to our country’s weapons designers, if the White House really did want to kill off reporters, they could find much more efficient ways of doing it than trying to blast them from halfway around the world.
If they wanted to get a group of them, for example, they could just eliminate the entire White House press corp. It’s easy to get them together – Fleisher merely has to whistle – and then a strategically engineered "accident" could take care of the rest. Of course, such an operation would require a fairly impressive cover-up, but this administration could handle it; they could just declare a few more documents "classified" and all would be well.
In fact, though, it might not even need to be that complicated. Just look at the way the White House reporters have responded to the stone-walling, restrictions, pre-scripted "press conference," and various demands recently (or, more accurately, not responded to them). It seems Fleischer can convince them of just about anything; the expedience of their own self-extermination might only be the next step. Or better yet, he could just write it into the script.
(published in The Ram, 10 April 2003)