Posted on 06/11/2003 4:00:27 PM PDT by veronica
Channel 4 News diplomatic correspondent Lindsey Hilsum has admitted that she "self-censored" her reports from Baghdad and did not tell viewers that Saddam Hussein's regime was hiding Scud missile launchers in residential areas, because she did not want to be thrown out of the city.
Hilsum saw a missile launcher in a back street of Baghdad after losing her way when driving to the scene of the first marketplace bombing in the city, in which 14 people were killed.
Although Channel 4 News was not censored by Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, Hilsum decided not to report on what she had seen for fear of being ejected from the city.
"We were not censored. Some of the broadcasters had Mukhabarat with them all the time. Channel 4 News didn't have any problems like that. But there was one occasion when we did censor ourselves," she said.
"After the first marketplace bombing we heard there had been a hit and we were able to go there in our own vehicle. We got lost and a couple of blocks from where the two missiles had hit there was a Scud missile launcher with a Scud on top.
"We then realised the Iraqis were hiding Scuds in residential areas. If I'd said that I think we would have been thrown out the next day," she told a Media Society event last night.
Hilsum thought she had found a way round the problem when the American military issued a statement about the marketplace bombing, saying they had been aiming at eight or nine missile launchers in the area.
However, the Americans later retracted this statement.
"I put in my copy: 'They may have been aiming at missile launchers in the area'. Then the Americans realised that if people put two and two together and realised that if they'd hit one of those launchers a lot more than 14 people would have been killed. Then they changed their minds and said the Iraqis must have hit themselves," she said.
When covering future combats, Hilsum said broadcasters should ensure that if they hire security guards they should not be allowed to carry arms, as happened in Iraq.
The issue was highlighted when a CNN team accompanied by an armed bodyguard returned fire at an Iraqi manned checkpoint in Tikrit. The decision to carry arms was lambasted by international press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres, but a CNN spokeswoman denied the broadcaster had set a "dangerous precedent".
"I know this happened in Baghdad - that security officers hired by broadcasters carried weapons. I know it's still going on," said Hilsum.
"If we carry weapons we become combatants and have no right to ask any army or rebel group to respect our independence and we have to be clear as an industry that this is going on," she told an audience of fellow journalists.
Hilsum also said it was a "scandal" that three American networks pulled out of Baghdad before the war began. On top of that, the former Iraqi regime ejected Fox News and CNN, meaning American viewers had no home-grown account of what was going on in the city.
She blamed the withdrawal of the US networks on "pressure from the Pentagon", adding that even small American newspapers had reporters in Baghdad.
"The Atlanta Constitution had two correspondents but the American networks weren't there and that's very serious because it means the Americans don't know what happened," Hilsum said.
And this person calls herself a reporter? I think Americans were getting reports from Baghdad regularly. Does she actually believe that reporting from Rather, Jennings or Brokaw would have been better than what we saw on Foxnews?
She claims to have self-censored amazing news. How were people served by her only reporting 'safe' facts.
Hilsum saw a missile launcher in a back street of Baghdad after losing her way when driving to the scene of the first marketplace bombing in the city, in which 14 people were killed.
Although Channel 4 News was not censored by Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, Hilsum decided not to report on what she had seen for fear of being ejected from the city.
If anyone can claim that it's likely a British female diplomatic correspondent can tell a "SCUD" from a SA-2, then I'm Saddam Hussein.
Even the military started using "SCUD" as a generic term for "missle" during the war.
The missile that people saw in the background on TV coverage in Baghdad was a SA-2, for example (a really big surface-to-AIR missle) and I suspect that's what she saw.
And we now know there were no SCUDs fired at Coalition forces during the war; there was a lot of misuse of "SCUD" as a generic term, particularly by Kuwaiti military sources.
She knew the Americans were being blamed for that market bombing yet she hid the fact of that missile launcher being parked near that market.
Quite possibly, but one of the illegal missles that Saddam did have, the one we saw in pairs in the back of trucks and so forth, was a derivitive of the SA-2, even though it was a surface to surface missle and not a SAM. They put on smaller control fins, since a SSM doesn't need to manuever as violently as a SAM does, the weight saved could then be used for a combination of more fuel and bigger warhead. The SSM, the Al Samoud used the same motors as the SA-2.
And that is her official portrait from the Channel 4 web site!
The Americans don't know what happened because news sluts like this bimbo and CNN weren't telling us.
They didn't want to report the truth because they were afraid they would get thrown out of Iraq. If they aren't going to report the truth, what the hell is the point of their being there?
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