LONDON (Online): Journalists worldwide have
expressed their concern at the bom If true, it opens up a worrying
development for news organisation covering wars and conflicts: now they could
be targeted simply for reporting a side of the story that one party wants
suppressed, The Guardian reported in its Monday editions. While news executives spent most
of the four-day event beating themselves up over how they had covered the
September 11 disaster and its aftermath, Gowing and a
number of fellow journalists wanted to alert their bosses to what they felt was
a disturbing shift in US policy. Gowing’s argument was that Al-Jazeera’s only crime
was that it was “bearing witness” to events that the Indeed there is no clear evidence
that Al-Jazeera directly supported the Tali Certainly, Al-Jazeera reflects a
certain cultural tradition: but only in the same way that CNN approaches
stories from a western perspective. Gowing demanded that the Pentagon be called to account
for the destruction of Al-Jazeera’s Journalists now appeared to be
“legitimate targets”, he said. “It seems to me that a very
clear message needs to go out that this must not be allowed to continue.”
It has to be stressed that the Pentagon denies the charge. Indeed, few senior news executives
were prepared to go on the record and give credence to the theory. But it is not the first time
journalists have been deliberately targeted: Serb television was bombed during
the Kosovo conflict because it was seen as an agent and advocate of state
terrorism. Al-Jazeera is not an agent of a
state, and few (except perhaps the However, the fact that Al-Jazeera
has reported in such depth the other side of this conflict is troubling to the
authorities. “Al-Jazeera has been
providing some material that has been very uncomfortable,” Gowing said at News World. He believes that the western
military forces are prepared to target journalists if they get in the way. He said that representatives of
the British Special Forces had told him: “When a war is not declared,
journalists are legitimate targets where they are inconvenient.”
Al-Jazeera certainly believes it was a target. Speaking on the telephone to News
World from The situation is still confused. Al-Jazeera has a conspiracy theory
that it cannot prove, but of which it is genuinely convinced. Wars are organized chaos and,
however much it likes to suggest that it is capable of precision bombing, it is
clear that the |