Thursday, July 07, 2005

America - Targeting Journalists - Foleygate

Last month I emailed several people in the journalistic community in an attempt to get them to speak out about Linda Foley's unsubstantiated and slanderous claims that the US targets journalists. Here is what Foley said:

Journalists . . . are not just being targeted verbally or politically; they’re also being targeted for real, in places like Iraq. What outrages me . . . is that there’s not more outrage about the number and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. . . . And it’s not just U.S. journalists. They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries . . . They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity.


Out of about two dozen emails, I got one reply, from Mike Hoyt of the Columbia Journalism Review. Mr. Hoyt said they would address the issue in their next issue and here it is.

Target and kill? Foley has been under attack since she said those words. And should be. Even the infamous killing of journalists by tank fire at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad was found not to have been deliberate, in an extensive investigation by Reporters Without Borders. Some facts: according to The Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 36 journalists have been killed in action in Iraq since March 2003, along with 18 media support workers; insurgent actions account for 34 of those 54 deaths; U.S. military fire accounts for at least 11. The committee says the record shows that “the military seems indifferent and unwilling . . . to take steps to mitigate risk.” But target and kill? The committee finds “no evidence to conclude that the U.S. military has deliberately targeted the press in Iraq.”

So on that subject here’s what Foley should have said: nothing.


While claiming Foley "should be" attacked for her words, The CJR does a lame job. If Foley should have said nothing, then shouldn't the CJR be calling for her to retract what she did say?

Since Foley cannot produce any evidence to back up her claim and the CJR has evidence to refute her, why is the CJR not calling for Foley to resign?

We are constantly being told that while the left does not support the war, they do support our troops and yet MSM are still covering for Foley. Why?
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