its a PR move to show the US ppl whats happening over there. the military is worried about stuff like Iraqi TV and Al Jazeera. so in a way they had to embed the reporters.
One British journalist killed, likely by friendly fire, with a cameraman and translator missing. All three were unilateral journalists, not embedded with coalition forces.
Well... Who's going to do an editorial about us blowing up baby milk factories now? What a shame. (sarcasm)
<b>Freakin' Liberals... <b> Yeah, because when something strange happens, it can't just be some nut job, it has to be a liberal nut job right? Geraldo is in trouble for allegedly drawing military tactical plans and positions in the sand and showing it on T.V. What an idiot, but else can you expect from a guy who was walking around carrying a gun and bragging about it while the U.S. was fighting Afghanistan? As for Arnett, maybe he can get a job with the Iraqi TV station. Hazardous job though since they're all apparently being blown up. Literally. These reporters are annoying and getting in the way. All ready they're taking Bush and the administration to task for the war allegedly going bad. Hello, it hasn't even been 2 weeks yet!
First of all I can't wait until the edit option is back on! Anyway Arnett has a new job, fittingly, at a UK tabloid. And to show he is a classless @ss and hasn't learned a thing he said that he was quote "Shock and Awe" about the situation. Yeah, that's real funny.
Ive always disliked Geraldo ....what an ass ........ -------------------------------------------------------------- Confusion surrounds Rivera's expulsion from Iraq Central Command: 'More important things to do' Monday, March 31, 2003 Posted: 8:12 PM EST (0112 GMT) A senior military official said Rivera was expelled because he sketched a future military operation. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military said Monday that Fox News Channel Correspondent Geraldo Rivera was being expelled from Iraq for divulging details of a future military operation, though later in the day a Central Command spokesman said he was not sure whether the newsman would be forced out. "My initial report was that he had been asked to leave his unit and subsequently the country, but since then I've heard different reports," Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens at Central Command said. "Frankly, we have bigger and more important things to do." He urged a reporter to call Fox News to learn Rivera's fate. John Stack, vice president of newsgathering for Fox News Channel, said Rivera "has not been told to leave" and that nobody from the U.S. military had contacted the network to say that Rivera is being removed. What sparked the controversy was a Monday report by Rivera that U.S. military officials said violated an important Pentagon rule imposed on its so-called embedded correspondents working inside fighting U.S. military units. Rivera had provided crucial details of a future military operation, officials said. In a live broadcast from the Iraqi desert, Rivera instructed his photographer to tilt the camera down to the sand in front of his feet so that he could draw a map. Rivera then outlined a map of Iraq, and showed the relative location of Baghdad and his location with the Army's 101st Airborne unit. The reporter then continued with his diagram to illustrate where the 101st would be going next. "He gave away the big picture stuff," one stunned senior military official told CNN. "He went down in the sand and drew where the forces are going." Rivera then reportedly provided another live report from Iraq on Fox hours after his expulsion was announced. Rivera said he knew nothing about the ordered expulsion at the time of the second report. "In fact, I'm further in Iraq than I've ever been," he said. "It sounds like some rats from my former network, NBC, are trying to stab me in the back." Rivera said he had heard nothing about being expelled until he called network headquarters for a scheduled live report. "MSNBC is so pathetic a cable news network that they have to do anything they can to attract attention," Rivera said. "You can rest assured that whatever they're saying is a pack of lies." A U.S. Central Command official said, "He is being pulled. He just doesn't know it yet. He has not gotten the word."
I for one am happy that both Geraldo and Arnett are out of action. (I'm sure they'll continue reporting, but from somewhere else). They are both asses, although if I had to pick the worse one, it would certainly be the treasonous ass Arnett. This is not the first time he's allowed himself to be used as the enemy's propaganda tool. Did you know that he's a US citizen?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/i...00&en=3284885479d8c216&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE Two Correspondents, One Predictable Outcome By ALESSANDRA STANLEY here are strains of Sophoclean tragedy in Peter Arnett's latest fall from grace. Mr. Arnett, the 68-year-old war correspondent, has braved countless perils since the Vietnam War, but he was his own greatest danger. Geraldo Rivera's predicament is closer to a Greek comedy. By drawing a map in the sand that revealed the position of the 101st Airborne with forbidden specificity, Mr. Rivera, the swashbuckling, paramilitary Fox News correspondent, let down the men of the 101st Airborne he intended to glorify. Advertisement But the real protagonists of these latest sagas of hubris and humiliation are not Mr. Arnett or Mr. Rivera, even if both men have outsize egos. Responsibility lies with the news executives who tempted fate by relying on reporters they knew to be unreliable. Mr. Rivera delivered many outlandish reports for Fox News when he raced to Afghanistan vowing to personally hunt down Osama bin Laden. One report in particular, however, in which he erroneously claimed to be standing on "hallowed ground" where American soldiers had been killed by friendly fire, should have given Fox second thoughts about giving him an important assignment in Iraq. Neither NBC nor MSNBC was prepared to hire Mr. Arnett full time in the years since his contract was not renewed by CNN. Yet once the bombing of Baghdad began, both networks used the fig leaf that he had been sent there by National Geographic Explorer to broadcast Mr. Arnett's reporting and to enhance their own prestige and ratings. Relying on Mr. Arnett in such a delicate position without taking real responsibility for his welfare or his actions was too sneaky — they should have known better than to buy the milk when getting the cow for free. With Mr. Arnett gone, television coverage of Baghdad by the major United States networks is almost as primitive as it was in 1991, when Mr. Arnett was a lone voice reporting by telephone for CNN; NBC and others are increasingly relying on print journalists who also report over their satellite phones. No American network kept its own full-time correspondents in Baghdad except CNN, although its team was expelled from Baghdad last week. And a striking number of reporters who did stay and filed reports to American news organizations were not American — most were British, or like Mr. Arnett, from New Zealand or other parts of the British Commonwealth. On television at least, American war correspondents seem to be an endangered species. British reporters, on the other hand, are becoming for United States news organizations what the Ghurka troops were to the British Army — braver and better. "I think its partly Vietnam: when the dust settled, dozens of American reporters and photographers were killed and it wasn't worth it," said John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's Magazine, who wrote a book about the coverage of the 1991 gulf war. "But I also blame management. American reporters don't think it's a way to get ahead." There is something inherently unsettling about a news organization that will hire a contract employee to take risks it will not let its own employees face, as ABC did when it took out its correspondents and drew up a contract with a young freelance reporter, Richard Engel. NBC's ambiguous relationship with Mr. Arnett was even more disturbing. He was the only journalist for a major American news organization allowed to remain in Baghdad through much of the gulf war in 1991, but his career at CNN collapsed when he narrated a documentary, later retracted, that charged that the American military and used nerve gas on American deserters during the Vietnam War. Mr. Arnett has not hidden why he decided to risk his life again to cover one more war zone. When he was not providing live narrative to the sound and light of bombs bursting around him, he was giving interviews about himself to news organizations in the United States. "I do get a perverse pleasure out of it. CNN did dump me, I thought unfairly," Mr. Arnett told reporters on a conference call, which was set up by MSNBC. Calling the retracted CNN story "almost the death blow to my career," he added: "It was something I had to dig myself out of, and I have been thinking for four years how to do it. The irony is I'm doing it here." Mr. Arnett then dug himself back in by telling an Iraqi interviewer that his reports about civilian casualties and the resistance of Iraqi forces helped the antiwar movement in the United States. Mr. Arnett was doing what reporters often do when reporting on a hostile government — try to convince its leaders that it is in their interests to keep them there. But by saying it on Iraqi television, he allowed himself to be used for Iraqi propaganda, and wore out his welcome with most American viewers. Why Mr. Arnett did not anticipate how his words would come off back home is more mysterious. But he was in a war zone, working under difficult circumstances, and NBC would have looked better sticking by him than it did giving him up as soon as criticism grew acute. Fox News, on the other hand, owes Mr. Rivera no such loyalty. He should have known the Pentagon's ground rules, and he violated them. He also violated the network's own pledge not to embarrass or betray the military in any way while America is at war. The Pentagon appears to be pressuring Fox News to withdraw Mr. Rivera from Iraq. It would be an even more just punishment if Fox News then sent Mr. Rivera to Paris.
Well Arnett is back. He is hired by the Daily Mirror out of Britain. Arnet hits back at being fired for telling the truth. It is interesting how the US media is having a difficult time keeping the lid on the news coverage of this war. ************************** ************************** THIS WAR IS NOT WORKING Apr 1 2003 By Peter Arnett I am still in shock and awe at being fired. There is enormous sensitivity within the US government to reports coming out from Baghdad. They don't want credible news organisations reporting from here because it presents them with enormous problems. I reported on the original bombing for NBC and we were half a mile away from those massive explosions. Now I am really shocked that I am no longer reporting this story for the US and awed by the fact that it actually happened. That overnight my successful NBC reporting career was turned to ashes. And why? Tariq Aziz told me the US will have to brainwash 25M Iraqis, because these people think exactly the same as Saddam Because I stated the obvious to Iraqi television; that the US war timetable has fallen by the wayside. I have made those comments to television stations around the world and now I'm making them again in the Daily Mirror. I'm not angry. I'm not crying. But I'm also awed by this media phenomenon. The right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here, whatever their nationality. I made the misjudgment which gave them the opportunity to do so. I gave an impromptu interview to Iraqi television feeling that after four months of interviewing hundreds of them it was only professional courtesy to give them a few comments. That was my Waterloo - bang! I have not yet decided what to do, whether to pack my bags and leave Baghdad or stay on. I'll decide what to do today, right now I'm chewing on what has happened to me. American Marines at our checkpoints are suspicious of every man, woman and child because of the suicide bomb But whatever happens I will never stop reporting on the truth of this war whether I am in Baghdad or somewhere else in the Middle East - or even back in Washington. I was here in 1991 and the bombing is very similar to that conflict but the reality is very different. The US and British want to come here, take over the city, upturn the government and take us through to a new era. The troops are in the country and fighting there way up here. It creates a very different atmosphere. The Ba'ath party, currently led by Saddam Hussein, has been in power for 34 years. Tariq Aziz told me the US will have to brainwash 25 million Iraqis because these people think exactly the same as Saddam does. Maybe he is wrong, maybe not. For months, Iraqis have said officially and privately: "We will fight the Americans, we will use guerrilla tactics, we will surprise them." But the Iraqi opposition has said: "This will be a pushover, everyone wants to rebel against Saddam." Now the reality is being played out on the battlefield. We have to watch the reality now and some Iraqis are fighting and the government does seem very determined. For me to see that and to be criticised for saying the obvious is unfair. As the battle for Baghdad grows, so the potential for civilian casualties grows. This is the spectre rising for the coalition as this war continues But it has made me a target for my critics in the States who accuse me of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I don't want to give aid and comfort to the enemy - I just want to be able to tell the truth. I came to Baghdad with my crew because the Iraqi side needs to be heard too. It is clear the original timetable that America would be in Baghdad by the end of March has fallen by the wayside. There is clearly debate in the US about this, reinforcements are being sent in and there are delays. This doesn't mean it is going badly. Every casualty is a loss but they have been in limited numbers so far. Every night and every day I hear the B-52s and the missiles hammering the defences Baghdad. Just like in Afghanistan and Vietnam, the US is bringing enormous firepower to bear which it believes will grind the Iraqis down. I have seen it before and it has been enormously effective. The US optimism is justified. On the other hand, at what cost to civilians ? During the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, I entered a US-held town which had been totally destroyed. The Viet Cong had taken over and were threatening the commander's building so he called down an artillery strike which killed many of his own men. The Major with us asked: "How could this happen?" A soldier replied: "Sir, we had to destroy the town to save it." The Bush and Blair administration does not want that label stuck on this war, it is a liberation for them. But the problem is US Marines at checkpoints are suspicious of every man, woman and child because of the suicide bomb. Already there is suspicion growing. And in the south, there have not been popular rebellions and uprisings. As the battle for Baghdad grows, the potential for civilian casualties grows. Optimists in the Pentagon talk about an internal coup. BNut who would have had believed Umm Qasr would hold out for six days? This is the spectre rising as this war continues. The US and Britain have to figure this out. I don't think you can tell how it will end, there are many scenarios. A siege of Baghdad... a special operations strike on Saddam. Optimists in the Pentagon talk about an internal coup. Who would have had believed Umm Qasr would hold out for six days or US Marines directing traffic would be killed by a suicide bomber? This is more like the West Bank and Gaza and it could become like that in some areas. The US and Britain must avoid that scenario. Forces come in, communities resist, then suicide bombing and resistance from guerrillas. Except the Iraqis will be putting up a stiffer fight than the Palestinians because they are better armed. We know the world, including many Americans, is ambivalent about this war and I think it is essential to be here. I'm not here to be a superstar. I have been there in 1991 and could never be bigger than that. Some reporters make judgements but that is not my style. I present both sides and report what I see with my own eyes. I don't blame NBC for their decision because they came under great commercial pressure from the outside. And I certainly don't believe the White House was responsible for my sacking. But I want to tell the story as best as I can, which makes it so disappointing to be fired. daily mirror
