lpret's Journal: The war in journalism

I just read an interesting article in the New York Times (no registration required) about the death of 3 journalists in Baghdad. The article was written by a NYT staffer in the building, so it was interesting how different everything was when it was personal. There were some interesting comments in regards to a service they held for those who died:

The journalists at the Palestine organized a 20-minute candlelit vigil at the hotel after dark, and debated among themselves whether there was justification in grieving for three dead journalists in a city where dozens of Iraqi civilians -- people who mostly had no choice about being in Baghdad, unlike the journalists, all of whom are volunteers for the wartime assignment -- had been killed on the same day.

Clearly some of those thoughts were of the reporter but were recorded as thoughts of the group as a whole. And this got me thinking...

It turns out that one of the journalists that was killed was from Al-jazeera. My question is, was this a coincidence? However much you want to believe that your country is always acting in the best manner, I wonder if this was an attempt to squelch an opposing viewpoint. Similar to the attack on the Al-jazeera website -- I wonder if it wasn't a government attack. Something else I'm noting, but perhaps this can just be chalked up to the fog of war, but NYT says the attack was clearly from a tank while aljazeera says it was from 2 missles.

With such difference, couldn't it be argued that it could have been an Iraqi attack? How has this clearly fell on the shoulders of the US? Nonetheless, Aljazeera offices have all been "accidently" hit by US forces. It just all sounds a little to staged to be coincidence. Hmm, or maybe I'm just a little too consipiratory...hold on, there's someone at the door

The coincidences are too great

[saskboy]

There is something fishy about this, but we will never know the truth most likely.