PressEthic

It seems that, these days, things are so bad in Iraq that even Robert Fisk is unsure how much longer he can keep travelling there to report. The risks might not be worth it.

Fisk, the Independent correspondent who (infamously) accused many of his colleagues of practising "hotel journalism" -- reporting from the safety of their hotel rooms instead of from the streets of Iraq -- calls his own current method of reporting "mouse journalism."

Fisk, whose new history of the Middle East, The Great War for Civilisation, has just been published, described mouse journalism as the practice of popping up at the scene of an event and staying just long enough to get the story, before the men with guns arrive.

In this article, Fisk talks about difficult and dangerous situations he has been in lately, saying that, as a result, he now allows himself a small time frame within which to get as much information as he can before heading out:

"If I go to see someone in any particular location, I give myself 12 minutes, because that is how long I reckon it takes a man with a mobile phone to summon gunmen to the scene in a car.

"So, after 10 minutes I am out. Don't be greedy. That's what reporting is like in Iraq."

Most reporters, he says, are embedded with military units for protection. Getting access to free information has become practically impossible.

I've always admired Fisk a great deal, so to hear this from him is disheartening. If has become impossible for journalists to access information in Iraq independently, then coverage will necessarily suffer. And, given the complexities of the situation there, that can't be good.