09 September 2010

Alright WikiLeaks - Where's Your Crusading Over Journalists' Deaths Now?

Interesting how it's only a worldwide scandal when US forces kill a journalist who's cavorting with the insurgents, but it's not when Iraqi insurgents gun down a TV journalist.

Gunmen on Wednesday killed an Iraqi TV journalist, the second to be slain in Iraq in as many days, highlighting the dangers media workers continue to face in the country seven years after the U.S.-led invasion.

While a number of foreign correspondents were killed in the years immediately after the invasion, Iraqi journalists are now the main target, especially photographers and TV journalists who are easier to spot, according to a Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media watchdog.

The Tuesday release of a report by the group entitled "The Iraq War: A Heavy Death Toll for the Media" coincided with the killing of Riyad Assariyeh, an anchor at state-run Iraqiya TV.

Assariyah also served on Baghdad's Provincial Council. He was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in a western Baghdad neighborhood.


By: Brant

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It appears you do not understand what wikileaks actually is.
It is a place for whistleblowers to submit their classified documents without being traceable.
If there is a whistleblower that will submit classified documents concerning this journalist being killed I am sure that wikileaks will post it.
Perhaps you are directing your anger at he wrong people?

Brant said...

Wikileaks lost that moral high ground as soon as they edited the video and added their own post-hoc captions, subtitles, and leading commentary. Even the website on which it was broken was named such that it prejudiced the audience toward a particular conclusion.

Wikileaks began editorializing as soon as that story was released. If you're going to editorialize, be consistent in your message. They've claimed that the deaths of the journalists in the Collateral Murder video were bad. Fine. Then either the deaths of Iraqi journalists at other hands are also bad, or Wikileaks is editorializing about the American prosecution of the war. Either way, they've been in the business of offering opinions for months now, regardless of what they may have set out to be....