PressEthic

An AP article that appeared on CNN.com on Friday pled the case for Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi Journalist for the Associated Press whose photography led to a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Tom Curley of the Associated Press questions the U.S. military's decision to detain Bilal, asserting that they do not have hard evidence to prove that he is a threat:

The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with the connivance of insurgents. So Bilal himself must be one, too, or at least a sympathizer.

It is a measure of just how dangerous and disorienting Iraq has become that suspicions such as these are considered adequate grounds for locking up a man and throwing away the key.

After more than five months of trying to bring Bilal's case into the daylight, AP is now convinced the Army doesn't care whether Bilal is or isn't an insurgent. The Army doesn't have to care. Bilal is off the street, and the military says it doesn't consider itself accountable to any judicial authority that could question his guilt.

This story brings to mind the great lengths journalists sometimes have to endure in order to "get the story," and leads me to question the military's reasons for Bilal's incarceration. Then again, isn't it possible that the U.S. Army does, in fact, have information that Hussein is an insurgent? The AP doesn't buy this story, and I find it reputable that they are standing behind Bilal in an attempt to clear his name.

The article goes on to explain AP's processes for hiring international journalists, demonstrating their importance in covering foreign affairs. Curley describes these international journalists as integral to the reporting of global events, because they can provide a historical context for their work by being familiar with the areas in which they report, and perhaps even eliminate otherwise inevitable "spin." More than anything, this article seems to me to be an effort to praise the Associated Press' practices (it is, in fact, commentary) and illustrate the significance of this international news organization in difficult times:

U.S. journalists are severely limited in their ability to move safely, make themselves understood and develop sources in such areas. AP has learned to overcome those limitations, using techniques honed over decades of covering sectarian confrontation and bloodshed in the Middle East.

It has long been AP practice to hire and train local people in the agency's permanent international bureaus. Many become highly skilled career journalists who remain with the Associated Press for decades. Several are second-generation staffers. Their work has never been more important to the Associated Press and the global audience that relies on our reporting.

Without their access and insight into what is happening in their countries and communities, our understanding of the history being made there every day would be shallow and one-dimensional. It would also be far more vulnerable to control and spin by "official" sources.

Both official and unofficial parties on every side of a conflict try to discredit or silence news they don't like. That is certainly the case in Iraq, where journalists are routinely harassed, defamed, beaten and kidnapped. At last count, 80 had been killed.

I certainly believe that it is important to have journalists who are from the countries about which they are reporting, because, as we have discussed in class, inherent bias or, as Curley refers to it, "spin" is, unfortunately for the reporting process, an innate human inevitability. Hopefully Bilal Hussein will not have to undergo unneccessary imprisonment, however, I wouldn't count on it.