http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0318/p06s02-wogn.htm
Reporters on the Job
• A Changing Baghdad: Correspondent Jill Carroll (story, page 1) first set foot in Baghdad four days after the city fell to US forces. "The big danger then was at night when gunfire would break out between US soldiers and looters, or among gangs," she says. Iraqis, she recalls, wanted to get hold of a satellite phone, which most journalists had, to tell relatives they were alive. I remember one enterprising guy standing in the famous Ferdos Square with a satellite phone charging a dollar a minute - and a long line of people waiting. I could wade into the crowds in front of the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, interviewing anyone without fear, openly telling them I was an American reporter."
Jill eventually left Baghdad, and returned for a stint three months later in July. "I remember the day we heard the shocking news that an US convoy had been hit by a bomb on a highway. One reporter threw on his flak jacket and raced out to cover something that is so routine now that it's hard to remember it was once big news."
After another absence, Jill moved to Baghdad to freelance fulltime in fall 2004. "I was surprised the electricity was still not fixed and struck by the traffic. A few days after I arrived, a massive boom shook me out of bed. It was the first day of Ramadan and five car bombs went off across Baghdad."
Jill says it was the beginning of what would become a tragic routine. "But still, I would often go to impoverished Sadr City, even the to thieves' market, and feel safe interviewing anyone," she says. "That ended April 4, when a Marine siege of Fallujah and a Shiite uprising made it dangerous for foreigners. Suddenly I had to wear a hijab in the car."
After another trip away, Jill returned this January. "After a terrifying fall when kidnapping and beheading became common, many journalists and freelancers had left," she says. "There are only a few of the old stalwart freelancers around now. I can't walk in the streets anymore or drop into a shop to talk to average Iraqis."
The starkest difference is in Omar. Jill has gauged her time in Iraq partly by the sentiments of a 23-year-old friend who initially was excited about his country's future. She says he called US soldiers "my brothers" and collected anything with a US flag on it. "He felt real sadness at news of growing attacks on US troops," she says.
Today, Omar openly says his generation is lost. "He doesn't feel anger at the US, just deep disappointment," says Jill. "He jokes all the time now and tells old stories to avoid talk of the future or the current news."
More on Jill Carroll:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3829
Covering the war gives journalists an opportunity to recall the noblest tenets of their profession and fulfill the public service role of journalism.
The sense that I could do more good in the Middle East than in the U.S. drove me to move to Jordan six months before the war to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began. All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent, so when I was laid off from my reporting assistant job at the Wall Street Journal in August 2002, it seemed the right time to try to make it happen. There was bound to be plenty of parachute journalism once the war started, and I didn't want to be a part of that.
So people become foreign correspondents to "do good?" Now we know!
BTW, the Christian Science Monitor bureau in Pakistan was instrumental in publishing messages from AlQaida. I wrote to the Editor in the US to ask why they would help terrorists who had been driven into hiding, into getting their propaganda printed. I got a mealy-mouthed non-responsive answer.
CSM is on the same list with CNN as far as I am concerned.
http://bowman.typepad.com/cubowman/2005/12/jill_carroll_on.html
It seemed that she was absorbed recently in the factional aspects of Iraqi politics, looking beyond the gunmen and kidnappers. A clue?