How to end AP’s “60 Minutes Moment” on Iraqi Sources

Like so many other news organizations, AP believes it must rely upon Iraqi stringers because there is simply too much danger to risk sending its American regular staff reporters outside Bagdhad’s Green Zone. Middle Eastern terrorists groups have a history of taking AP reporters hostage, including Terry Anderson, who spent nearly seven years in captivity in Lebanon.

And one of the reasons that journalists are in danger is that the terrorists target them, hoping to drive them back into a few heavily guarded redoubts, where they will have no choice but to rely on easily manipulated local “stringers” and other sources which may be nothing more than agents of terrorist gangs.
The answer, and the ultimate guarantee of safety for journalists, is for journalists to return to the field and start doing their own reporting again. Once it becomes clear to terrorists that they cannot drive all foreign journalists into holes, nor control them, the value of attacking any of them will drop precipitately, and more value will accrue to trying to influence journalists the old way: bribery, extortion, Potemkin constructions, and face-to-face falsehoods in the field.

Submit to Stumbled Upon!