Local heroes: risk-taking in Iraq

Abstract

The BBC’s developing world correspondent stresses the responsibilities various news organisations have towards the local journalists working for them in war zones. “For local journalists, and particularly cameramen, the war [in Iraq] represents a unique set of challenges”, he writes. “Anyone working as a journalist in Baghdad is automatically under threat, and many local journalists do not admit their trade to their neighbours, particularly if they work for a foreign news organisation. The threats come not just when the bombs are going off, but in normal daily life. Some days before the anniversary of a grisly massacre of civilians by American soldiers, we asked a stringer in the region to take some general shots of the town and get interviews a year on, if he could. But what would have been a simple routine commission in any other country in the world turned into a life-threatening nightmare: after setting out from his home in Ramadi he was blocked on the road several times and then held up overnight at an American roadblock in a region where anyone out after dark risks their life. He did not get the pictures.”