Rageh Omaar wants a warning from Baghdad
There are many ways to chart the inexorable and bloody collapse of Iraq in the three years since the regime of Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Yet as the tragedy in Iraq has unfolded, one thing has not changed. Reporters and news organisations courageously and rightly continue to maintain a presence in the Iraqi capital, while their ability to provide a comprehensive eyewitness account of events has lessened with every month that has passed since the fall of Baghdad.
Before the war, BBC despatches from Baghdad were prefaced by a health warning: "Our correspondent's report has been monitored by the Iraqi authorities." It is my personal belief that reports coming out of Baghdad now should be preceded by the words: "Because of the violence and instability in Iraq, the movement of our correspondents is severely restricted." By not doing this, we fail to admit the fundamental fact faced by the western news organisations that continue to report from Iraq: it is impossible for their reporters to travel freely enough around Baghdad and its environs to provide a full picture of the war from all sides. I have yet to meet any western colleague returned from the city who doesn't feel this is the case.
This is not an argument about whether journalists should remain in Baghdad. Of course they should, and I am thankful that there are colleagues prepared to do so. Neither is this a grotesque accusation against friends and colleagues about their work or bravery. It is a call for us and our organisations to describe to our audiences clearly and honestly how the chaotic and violent circumstances in Iraq are damaging our ability to be their eyes and ears in all areas. Iraq continues to be the most politically divisive and consequential issue in the world. If we have to report from the heart of it with one hand tied behind our backs, shouldn't our audiences (in Iraq as well as Britain) be told?
Although journalists have moved out of the so-called Green Zone in Baghdad, this has not changed the degree of armed protection and numbers of security guards needed by virtually all TV reporters who now live on the opposite bank of the River Tigris. The street in which a number of major news organisations have their permanent Baghdad bureaux (which used to be a normal residential road) has been barricaded at either end by fortifications and armed guards and is closed to all normal traffic. You can leave the Green Zone, but you cannot escape the need to protect yourself and your colleagues.
Central to this issue are the enormous pressures facing senior editors of news organisations who have permanent offices in Baghdad. First, there's the heavy responsibility for the safety and welfare of their employees. Every foreign editor lives in dread of the phone call from Baghdad bearing terrible news. But far more insidious and unseen are the financial and commercial pressures they face in maintaining their bureaux. In my last year as a staff correspondent with the BBC, the corporation spent just under £2m on its news-gathering operation in Baghdad, much of that due to security issues. The cost of insuring staff to go to Iraq is prohibitive and possible only for the very biggest news organ-isations. In addition, there is the now perma-nent weekly wage bill for the armed bodyguards that they have to hire from British security companies, who use former special forces and military personnel. Each of these security officials, and many bureaux hire up to four or five of them, is paid upwards of £500 a day. That's a daily wage bill of at least £2,000, whether you file a report or not.
Senior reporters and editors have to battle against finance officers who look at the costs of maintaining staff in Baghdad and judge these against how much the journalists are able to do. I sincerely believe that the arguments put forward by editors trying to maintain a permanent base in Iraq would be strengthened if they openly described the severe limitations under which journalists are being forced to report the most important political crisis in the world.
I repeat: my intention here is not to undermine the fine work of many journalists. It is to describe how the situation in Iraq is undermining journalism.
The reputation of journalism has been somewhat dented by the practice of "embedding" reporters in war zones. Failure to be open about the difficulties we face in reporting Iraq comprehensively - as independent "non-embedded" journalists - will cause us further damage still.
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