Modern-day gladiators
By Jay Bushinsky Posted Mon, Jan 1 2001
Are today’s foreign correspondents, photographers and TV cameramen behaving like modern-day gladiators, ready to enter the arena of combat at the risk of being maimed or killed simply to satisfy the presumably insatiable appetite of a sensation-addicted public?
That professionally unorthodox question certainly can be asked with regard to the coverage of contemporary conflicts in which the front lines are fluid and impossible to define and the contending parties cannot or will not extend even minimal safeguards to the news media personnel clamoring for “access.”
It is particularly relevant insofar as the prolonged Palestinian “Intifada of el-Aksa” is concerned. This is the uprising allegedly provoked last October when Ariel Sharon, the hawkish leader of the opposition Likud party, led a group of his parliamentary colleagues on a heavily-guarded tour of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—a sacred compound revered in the Islamic World as “Haram e-Sharif”
(which means the Noble Sanctuary in Arabic), site of the exquisite Dome of the Rock and el-Aksa mosques. Originally, it is where the ancient Hebrews erected their First and Second Temples.
Since the enraged Palestinians began throwing stones and gasoline bombs at Israeli troops and police in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and escalated their violence by firing live ammunition (the Israeli responded with rubber-coated and regular bullets), the casualty toll has included international journalists along with uniformed Israeli and Palestinian personnel.
For example: – Oct. 18: Patrick Baz, a photographer for Agence France-Presse, was shot in the hand by a rubber-coated bullet while he was taking pictures of a confrontation between the two sides on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah. – Oct. 21: Jacques-Marie Bourget, a Paris-Match reporter, was shot in the chest while covering clashes in the same area. – Oct. 31: Ben Wedeman, CNN Cairo bureau chief, was shot in the lower back near the Karni Crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip. – Nov. 11: Yola Monakhov, a photographer on assignment for the Associated Press, was shot in the lower abdomen while covering a confrontation between Palestinian and Israeli personnel near Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. (She said an Israeli soldier turned and fired at her at short range.)
The International Press Institute said that since the start of the latest crisis, 60 journalists have been wounded, beaten, arrested, harassed or otherwise prevented from carrying out professional duties or have had their equipment confiscated. At its recent meeting in New Delhi, the IPI passed a resolution expressing shock at the situation and called on both Israel and the Palestinian National Authority to ensure protection of journalists.
The chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Israel, Howard Goller, who also is a senior staff member of the Reuters bureau in Jerusalem, sent an open letter to Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, in which he stated that “it is the belief of the journalists who were injured and/or of other journalists who witnessed these incidents that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) fired the shots.”
Goller contended that “in none of these cases do we believe that these journalists or their actions could have been misconstrued as presenting a threat to the soldiers who are believed to have fired at them.”
This is precisely where the apparent contradiction emerges between the IDF’s self-declared policy of free access for journalists to the trouble spots of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the Foreign Press Association’s rundown of cases in which Israel’s troops allegedly fired on them.
“We permit the news media to be present in the area even if this is dangerous,” said Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, the IDF’s chief foreign press liaison officer. “It doesn’t matter if this is convenient for us or not.”
It is not quite that simple, though. Shabtai Simantov, an Israeli national who works as a TV soundman for RTL, points out that before he and his colleagues could proceed to the scenes of violence they were required to sign waivers absolving the IDF of any financial or other responsibility for the consequences that might ensue, especially medical treatment or permanent disability.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which is in administrative charge of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and all other urban centers of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, keeps a sharp eye on the identity and affiliation of the media personnel but does not prevent journalists from moving forward to vantage points they deem most desirable. Its press office does not require that they sign waivers. However, it acts swiftly and irrevocably against any journalist whose work allegedly undermines the PNA’s interests or challenges its political line.
This occurred in Ramallah when the Palestinian police, egged on by a vindictive mob, killed two IDF reservists who had inadvertently stopped at a PNA police roadblock and allowed their corpses to be mutilated and dragged through the city’s streets. Riccardo Cristiano, RAI’s correspondent, considered it necessary to apologize to the PNA authorities for having sent a cassette depicting these grisly events to Rome. Subsequently, Cristiano and the entire RAI team were recalled while Israeli media critics assailed the apology and their behavior.
A senior photographer for London’s Daily Telegraph, who took pictures at the scene, was beaten by Palestinians who smashed his camera, exposed his film and threatened him with bodily harm.
The overriding issue is whether it makes sense professionally and morally for members of the fourth estate to risk their lives in chaotic and inherently perilous situations. In so doing, they are playing the game by a new set of rules. They do not have the protection of field commanders who give the highest priority to their physical safety—if only because of the once-prevalent belief that they will be perceived as having lost control, militarily incompetent or doomed to defeat if their casualty toll includes foreign correspondents.
Col. Rafowicz admitted that the Intifada of el-Aksa “was not a regular war.” He said the reporters and other media personnel “converge from both sides” and always tend to “run forward” with the flow of action. He contended that the IDF “has nothing to hide,” but the reckless and laissez-faire access it grants can lead to tragedy.
In conventional wars, including the two world wars as well as the Korean conflict, there were front lines, war correspondents attached to field headquarters and there was respect for their mission. At the same time, the editors back home did not want their men and women to take inordinate risks. I was once chewed out by my then-boss for drawing Jordanian sniper fire at my car on the first day of the Six Day War.
“A dead correspondent is a useless correspondent,” he said.
And the captains of the contemporary TV news operations should think twice about the dangers to which they often expect their correspondents to be exposed. If the demand for action and consequent bloodshed is prompted by fear that the competition will have it, or by a fixation about relative ratings, then this should be universally condemned.
To that extent, NBC’s Art Kent may have been right when he refused to be sent to Sarajevo during the height of the Bosnia conflict simply because he did not want to die there.
Could anyone guarantee that he would survive unscathed?