Iraq Can Be a Deadly Assignment for Journalists

Jan. 28, 2007 — -- Journalists have risked their lives to cover wars for generations. But never have they had to face the risks they now face in Iraq.

2006 was the deadliest year for journalists in the 25-year history of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which recorded 32 deaths in Iraq last year.

"We've never seen a conflict like this," said Joel Simon of CPJ.

The risk for journalists is no longer simply being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Now," Simon said, "the primary risk to journalists is not crossfire, it's murder."

Anne Garrells has covered the war for National Public Radio since before the invasion. She is one of just a handful of Western journalists who remained in Baghdad during the first stages of the war.

"There was maybe a brief window of about six months when we could travel the country freely and talk to anybody," she said. "Then the car bombs began in earnest, and then we became the targets. We became hunted."

ABC's Dan Harris, who just returned from his sixth reporting trip to Iraq, said every journalist there is constantly aware of the risk.

Exactly one year ago, ABC News' Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt were seriously injured by a roadside bomb as they rode in a military convoy.

Woodruff's recovery has been remarkable. The first doctors to examine him thought he would die. The language centers of his brain were damaged by the blast and, according to his brother Dave, Woodruff's first conversations were sometimes in his second language -- Mandarin Chinese.

Today, Woodruff is working on a book and a documentary, both to be released next month.

Vogt, who was less seriously injured, is already back at work.

Time Magazine's Michael Weisskopf had a similar close call. In 2003, he saved the lives of everyone in his Humvee when he grabbed a grenade that had been tossed through the window.

"Some instinct in me made me lunge forward and pick it up," he said. "It was so hot I could feel the flesh in my hand liquefying, and I instinctively began to fling it out of the Humvee. And just as I did, everything went dark. And when I woke up, my life had changed forever."

Weisskopf lost his right hand, and now works with a special voice-activated word processor. He has just completed a book, called "Blood Brothers," about his experiences.

But Harris, Weisskopf and Garrells all acknowledge that, as great as the risks they take are, the risks taken by Iraqi journalists are exponentially higher. Ninety three journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began. Two of those were Americans, and 72 were Iraqis.

Western journalists working in Iraq are just too conspicuous, according to Simon.

"They have to rely on Iraqi reporters to be their eyes and ears on the ground, and those reporters are being targeted for murder."

Some reporters believe the danger and the deliberate targeting of journalists has crippled the reporting of the war.

"The most basic reporting in Iraq is extremely difficult to carry out," said Simon.

"There was a time when covering Iraq was a reasonable risk," said Weisskopf. "It now borders on unreasonable. At one point, we could watch Iraqis attempt to rebuild their society. Now, Iraqis are really pitted against Iraqis, and it's too dangerous to get in the middle of it."

Other reporters are more sanguine.

Garrells acknowledged there are places she and other reporters can no longer go. But enough of the story is getting out, she said, to justify the risk.

"So far, I still think the journalism we get out of it makes it worth it," she said.

"It's never not scary," said Harris. "Every reporter has to make their own calculations about whether it's worth going. But for me, the story is of sufficient magnitude that it's worth the risk."