Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Journalists and battlefield ethics
Readers of righty blogs are familiar with the case of Bilal Hussein, the Associated Press photographer who has been held by American forces in Iraq for 20 months on suspicion of terrorism. Hussein's case has become something of a cause among journalists, who regard his detention without charges and legal representation to be an attack on, or at least an affront to, the press. Well, Hussein has now been charged (NY Times story), and the accusations are ugly (bold emphasis added):
A spokesman for the military said that Mr. Hussein had been detained as “an imperative security threat” and that he has persistently been “treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with all applicable law.”
In a lengthy e-mail message, the spokesman said that Mr. Hussein had been named by “sources” as having “possessed foreknowledge of an improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) attack” on American and Iraqi forces, “that he was standing next to the I.E.D. triggerman at the time of the attempted attack, and that he conspired with the I.E.D. triggerman to synchronize his photograph with the explosion.”
The e-mail message did not say whether the photograph in question is the one that Mr. Hussein took in Falluja on Nov. 8, 2004, of Iraqi insurgents firing a mortar and small arms, which was among the 20 from The Associated Press that collectively won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography.
The military spokesman said further: “The Associated Press was informed that the sources had reported Mr. Hussein’s knowing and willing offer to provide a false Iraqi national identification card to an alleged sniper, whom Mr. Hussein knew was wanted” by the military, “in order to assist the sniper in eluding capture.”
As far as I'm concerned, if these accusations are true there is no hole deep enough for this guy. Still, many journalists would disagree even so. It is difficult to distinguish Bilal Hussein's alleged behavior -- at least in the I.E.D. encounter -- from the "ambush" hypothetical put to Mike Wallace 20 years ago, in which Wallace asserted that he would not warn American soldiers walking into an ambush because it would compromise his professional "higher duty" to observe rather than participate.
It must be convenient to have ethical rules that are so perfectly aligned with the advancement of one's career.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Dec 19, 09:24:00 PM:
Any journalists that disagree should go in the hole with him.
By 
thesixthmoon, at
Wed Dec 19, 09:59:00 PM:
By , at
Wed Dec 19, 10:08:00 PM:
I was thinking of that "ambush hypothetical" as I read this entry.
And now I'm thinking of Michael Yon's reaction when the unit he was embedded with came under attack.
Of course there's another obvious difference in the scenarios. Yon was fraternizing with the good guys.
By , at
Thu Dec 20, 12:32:00 AM:
Where would the majority of MSM journalists come out on this question, do you think? How rotten has journalism become? Truthfully, I doubt it's even close: with Hussein.
Andrew
