Given the dangerous nature of covering news in Iraq and the precipitous decline in the number of people actually in Iraq practicing journalism:
The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?
Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.
And given the aversion to reporters embedded with the U.S. Military and reports from those reporters in certain quarters:
Unembedded journalist to speak Tuesday at Cornell
Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who spent a total of eight months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few unembedded journalists, is scheduled to speak at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 25 in Kaufmann Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University...The talk is sponsored by Haymarket Books, the International Socialist Organization, Watermargin Coop, the Cornell Campus Antiwar Network, National Lawyers Guild, Amnesty International, and other organizations.
It's quite difficult for me to understand how it is that the photo-journalists capturing these images are not embedded or actively producing agitprop [1][2] for their cause and should carry any legitimacy let alone be published as "news".
Mahdi Army fighters take positions in Basra, Iraq, Friday, March 28, 2008. Shiite militants clashed with government forces for a fourth day in Iraq's oil-rich south and sporadic fighting broke out in Baghdad, despite a weekend curfew in the capital.
(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani) link to entire photo album
1: Wikipedia: Agitprop ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agitprop )
2: Tate Collection Glossary: Agit-prop ( http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=19 )
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