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Atwar Bahjat, the highly respected Al Arabiya correspondent who was murdered in Iraq last week with two of her team, spoke about the plight of journalists there when INSI's global inquiry into the causes of journalist deaths visited Qatar last May to meet Middle East reporters. In one sentence she summed up the deadly truth facing all news media staff in Iraq: "Journalists have paid the price for conflicting views in Iraq. If I see or write or film something you don’t like you can kill me, kidnap me, shoot me on the street, whatever." Bahjat, cameraman Khaled Mahmoud Al Falahi and technician Adnan Khairallah died in a hail of bullets fired by an unidentified gunmen near Samarra as they covered the attack on the holy sites in the city. A total of 104 news media staff have now died covering the conflict, more than two thirds of them Iraqis, like Bahjat. Dozens more have been wounded, beaten, kidnapped, tortured and detained without trial as they struggle to keep the avenues of information open for the country and for the rest of the world. |