Posted on 11/20/2001 2:55:30 AM PST by mdittmar
Reuters Editor-in-Chief Geert Linnebank paid tribute on Tuesday to Harry Burton and Azizullah Haidari, two Reuters journalists who were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan.
Linnebank expressed condolences to their families and those of an Italian and a Spanish journalist who were killed with them on Monday. He said the deaths appeared to be ``yet more cold-blooded executions of journalists going about their work.''
Spanish journalist Julio Fuentes of El Mundo and Italian journalist Maria Grazia Cutuli of Corriere della Sera were shot dead with Burton and Haidari in the ambush, on the road from Pakistan to Afghan capital Kabul.
``We are devastated by the loss of our two colleagues in Afghanistan. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families, and with the families of the two journalists who died with them somewhere on the road from Jalalabad to Kabul,'' Linnebank said.
``We mourn the passing of two friends, consummate professionals who made a life of reporting the facts despite the risks and the dangers that that brought with it.
``Both 33 years old, Harry and Aziz came from very different backgrounds -- Aziz an Afghan refugee who joined Reuters in Pakistan in 1992 where he went on to become a news photographer; Harry an Australian cameraman based in Jakarta who made a name for himself covering the civil war in East Timor. What brought both of them to Reuters, and then to Afghanistan, was a shared belief that reporting the news can make a real difference. We owe them a great debt, as colleagues, and as beneficiaries of their reporting.''
Linnebank added:
``That their deaths are cruel, senseless, a terrible waste, goes without saying. But their deaths also make us angry, outraged at what appears to be yet more cold-blooded executions of journalists going about their work. The deaths of Harry and Aziz, and those of Julio Fuentes and Maria Grazia Cutuli, come just a week after three journalists died in an ambush on another road in Afghanistan. We owe it to them, to all the other colleagues who have lost their lives covering conflict, and also the hundreds of journalists who are at risk in the front line every day, to uphold their legacy.''
at what appears to be yet more cold-blooded executions of journalists going about their work.
What a low life.
Two of his own reporters killed and he's using clinton speak!
He said the deaths appeared to be ``yet more cold-blooded executions of journalists going about their work.''
I'm sure the families of the two who were killed appreciate his objectiveness.
A truly objective reporter would have termed this “activity” what it is: that several persons employed by news organizations met with an unknown group of people on a road in Afghanistan and, after a disagreement, died due to unknown causes not believed to be natural.
Yikes, that was scary. Please keep a lid on it, lest Reuters comes, and chloroforms you, then carries you off to Afghanistan as their new star reporter...
Back in the real world, its always a tragedy when people are murdered and my sympathies are with their families.
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