Colleagues Under Fire But U.S. Media Mute (Right-Wing "NEWS TWINKIES")

You have to wonder what Eason Jordan thinks about last Friday's attack on the car that took Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena from her kidnapping ordeal to her close call at the Baghdad airport.

Jordan is the CNN news chief who in January made controversial remarks about U.S. troops targeting journalists, comments which led to his resigning "to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."

Never mind that, according to David Gergen, the Harvard professor and former presidential adviser, who moderated the Davos panel on which Jordan made his statements, Jordan was merely refuting the idea that the dead journalists were actually "collateral damage."

In the rush to hang Jordan, the right — and their willing news twinkies in the media — seem totally unperturbed that the only place reporters feel halfway safe in Iraq is either embedded in the belly of the U.S. military beast or on a Baghdad hotel roof, shielded by satellite dishes.

Consider that Sgrena's car, reportedly 700 metres from the airport, had already cleared other U.S. military checkpoints. Still, it was drilled by bullets.

Although exactly how many bullets remains a mystery since, at last report, when the Associated Press asked to see the car — in which Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was killed and another official injured — the U.S. military said it didn't know where the thing was.

Which doesn't inspire confidence in the investigation into this murky affair that the U.S. has promised to conduct.

Recall the last couple of so-called investigations into the deaths of journalists by U.S. fire.

After the April 2003 attack on Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, a place where hundreds of journalists were known to be holed up, the U.S. Army refused to release the details of its investigation. Of course, its finding cleared the U.S. of killing two cameramen: Jose Couso of Spain's Telecinco and Ukraine's Taras Protsyuk, who was working for Reuters.

A few months later, Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana — a Palestinian who had survived beatings by West Bank settlers and the Israeli army — filmed his own death by U.S. tank. That happened just moments after he had checked in with the troops, providing his coordinates.

Again, a U.S. military investigation cleared the shooters, saying they had mistaken his video camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Now I am not suggesting for a second that the U.S. was out to hit Sgrena and the officials who saved her from her kidnappers. But who knows? Sgrena, who was there, says one thing and the U.S. says another.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media and bloggers are making a big deal out of the fact that she works for Il Manifesto, a "communist paper."

Yesterday, the Moonie-owned Washington Times was floating the story that Italian authorities had not properly notified the U.S. military about the Sgrena vehicle movements.

So, yes, it could have all been an honest mistake or, as faithful reader Carlos Coimbra cynically put it to me in an email, just another "Baghdad speeding ticket."

I can't say for sure one way or the other — unlike, say, both CTV and Citytv who seemed to have concluded their own investigations Friday night when they said the U.S. "mistakenly'' shot Sgrena's car and rescuers.

What I find really disturbing is how few American journalists are protesting what appears to be the Pentagon's callous disregard for getting out the truth, either by making it safer for journalists to do their jobs or by its own full disclosure of the facts of these killings.

Forget shooting the messenger. Now the U.S. media are shooting themselves in the foot.

CHECK IT OUT: For more on Iraq, go to http://www.truthout.org where Steve Weissman has a thorough three-part series on the dangers for journalists.

POST SCRIPT: Robson Fletcher, a journalism student at the University of British Columbia, sent me a link to a piece he did on the Brad Evenson affair at the National Post.

As I reported last July, Evenson was the medical reporter who parted company with the paper after it was discovered he had "fabricated names and quotes" in nine stories in 2002.

At the time, the Post was not forthcoming with the facts, dismissing the mess in 154 words at the bottom of page A2, in the middle of a holiday weekend.

"There is no evidence that any of the fabrications contained medical information, nor were the names or comments of any members of the medical profession falsified," the Post stated.

But, contrary to that claim, Fletcher discovered that Evenson had indeed cited at least two health professionals who seem not to exist. Read all about it at http://www.journalism.ubc.ca/thunderbird.

Well, it's exactly what Eason Jordan suggested when he said the U.S. "targeted" journalists. And this genius seems to think the Sgrena mess somehow validates his comments.

The soliders at the checkpoint may have acted with total justification or they may have had itchy trigger fingers. Either way it's a long way from "assasination."

Worth noting that this commie bitch wasn't acting as journalist when she was got shot up, just a useful idiot (I know--same difference). She gets herself kidnapped by Muslim fanatics. Then begs the the Italian government into caving in and paying for her release. Of course, the Italians don't want to advertise that they're bending over terrorism, so they keep us in the dark and complain when things blow up in their face.

Sgrena goes on TV and praises the people who threatened to chop her head off as humane, while slamming the U.S. I must be living in the Twilight Zone. Meanwhile, the blood money is used to finance more kidnappings and killings.

Alarming indeed: at least 73 [journalists dead] and counting.

Nobody drafted these journalists. They weren't ordered by legal authority to go to Iraq. They weren't even recruited with promises of college money. They, more than anyone over there, volunteered. They must, or at least should, have known the dangers of reporting from a war zone.

And I look askance at that number; everyone knows not every journalist reports solely to a newspaper or news channel. If we could determine which ones were enemy agents trying to stage and film propaganda, I'm sure the number would go down.

He was trying to refute the idea and replace it with ... what? I think we all know. At least, the video knows, and that's not being released.

Consider that Sgrena's car, reportedly 700 metres from the airport, had already cleared other U.S. military checkpoints.

Does Mr. Zerbisias think that once a vehicle passes a checkpoint, it's marked with some kind of invisible ink that soldiers at other checkpoints can see so they just wave it through without searching it again? Ignoring the fact that the contents of the vehicle can change between checkpoints, or previous searches may have missed something? Preposterous.

Yeah, right. No one in the entire US Military knows where the vehicle is. And I bet they actually asked everyone, too. I bet they didn't just ask some flustered 2LT PAO, then spin his answer of, "I don't know at this time," into "No one in the military knows."

No comment on the Palestinian surviving the Israelis. As to "providing his coordinates" moments ago, again ... does Mr. Zerbisias think that the Army has some kind of telepathic chain of command, so that if you provide your coordinates to a headquarters, suddenly every unit, crew, and soldier in the theater knows instantaneously and exactly where you are and adjusts fire to avoid you?

And where can I get this video?

Now I am not suggesting for a second that the U.S. was out to hit Sgrena and the officials who saved her from her kidnappers. But who knows?

I am not suggesting that Mr. Zerbisias is an idiot of the highest order and probably smells bad. But who knows?

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