Posted on 09/28/2002 6:54:20 AM PDT by philo
P-I sends reporter, photographer to Iraq for inside report
In recent weeks, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, like almost all newspapers, has been replete with stories analyzing the policies and politics -- national and global -- surrounding the expected U.S. attack to force a "regime change" in Baghdad.
In the cavalcade of coverage, one significant gap stands out: the lack of news from inside Iraq. How are the Iraqi people faring? They have been torn by years of military dictatorship, war and more than a decade of economic privation from international sanctions. Now, add to that list of woes the renewed threat of war.
The reason that reporting from ground level in Iraq is so hard to come by isn't complicated. It's hardly a media conspiracy to ignore such a good story. The reality is that very few foreign journalists have been allowed into the country. And once they are there, unfettered travel and access to Iraqi citizens are extremely difficult to achieve.
The Post-Intelligencer has an advantage in pursuing this story. P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson and photographer Dan DeLong visited Iraq in 1999 and produced "Life and Death in Iraq," a report on the human consequences of the sanctions. "Life and Death in Iraq" won acclaim from P-I readers and national awards for both photos and stories.
Johnson Partly because of that previous experience, Johnson was able to gain access again at this critical time. He and P-I photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. expect to arrive in Iraq tomorrow, and for the next two weeks they will file stories and photographs about the people living in the shadow of the gathering storm. Johnson will reconnect with Iraqi families and individuals he wrote about three years ago, and through those contacts he will be in a unique position to see how daily life in Iraq has changed.
As President Bush lobbies Congress and the international community for support in the mission to oust Saddam Hussein, the view from inside Iraq is more important than ever.
In order to get into the country, and in the effort to cover what is also a very good local story, Johnson and Kitagaki accompanied a group of Seattleites who have traveled to Iraq as part of anti-war and anti-sanction volunteer efforts. Some of them are going to Iraq at the invitation of a U.N. relief agency.
Also in Iraq on a fact-finding mission are Democratic Congressmen Jim McDermott of Seattle and David Bonior of Michigan. Johnson and Kitagaki will cover their visit.
Kitagaki In its coverage of the Gulf War and its aftermath, U.S. media drew criticism for neglecting the story of the war's toll inside Iraq. On this assignment, Johnson and Kitagaki are charged with chronicling life under the threat of war, without any political varnish or spin. It is the P-I's intention simply to show the human side of the country with which Americans may soon be at war.
Johnson, 54, has covered trouble spots around the world since 1979 for magazines, news services and newspapers. He has won numerous awards, and for his journalistic efforts he's been chased by paramilitaries in the Philippines, arrested three times by the Pinochet regime in Chile and imprisoned twice in Colombia. His newspaper work has included stints at Alameda Newspaper Group in California, The Everett Herald and the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Kitagaki, 48, is an accomplished photojournalist. Before starting at the P-I three years ago, he worked for the San Francisco Examiner, the San Jose Mercury-News and the Portland Oregonian. He shared in a Pulitzer Prize for earthquake coverage at the Mercury-News and has won a variety of other national awards. He has covered three Olympics and has photographed in Mexico, Vietnam, Indonesia and China.
Their exclusive coverage begins early next week in the P-I.
P-I managing editor David McCumber can be reached at 206-448-8034 or davidmccumber@seattlepi.com.
They will be shown what SadAss wants to be seen or read in America.
Says Who???
I hope our military plants a tracking device in his backpack. That way, as he sits around with his newfound friends cooking up ways to further undermine America, we can zero in on him with a smart bomb.
The P-I does some good work, once in a while. But I confidently predict extreme left-wing bias in this report.
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