[eccr] Truth is elusive in wartime

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Truth is elusive in wartime
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The media have faced difficulties establishing what is true
in a war that is being fought as much in the press as it is
on the battlefield.  BBC director of news Richard Sambrook
has admitted it is proving difficult for correspondents in
Iraq to distinguish the truth from false reports, after a
series of media claims about the progress of coalition
forces turned out to be premature.  "Nobody including the
media has the full picture of what's going on. Reporting the
war is about putting together fragments of information.
We're all trying to work out this jigsaw and what the
overall picture is," Mr Sambrook said.  The Iraqi port city
of Umm Qasr has been reported as being taken by coalition
forces more than nine times since Friday and Basra has been
the subject of further confusion after reports that Iraqi
civilians were involved an uprising Wednesday proved
premature.  The British broadcaster has said that in
reporting the war it will state clearly when a report has
come from just one source.  "We have to be completely
transparent and clear with our audience, to say 'this is
what we've heard, we'll try to check it out and do the best
we can'," Mr Sambrook said.

Source: http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,922242,00.html -
MediaGuardian.co.uk

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NYSE bans al-Jazeera reporters
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The New York Stock Exchange has banished the Arab television
network al-Jazeera from its trading floor.  The NYSE said
the move was made for reasons of space on the floor.  But it
did not rebut suggestions that the real motive was because
it objected to al-Jazeera's showing footage of US prisoners
of war and casualties of the fighting in Iraq.  Ray
Pellecchia, an NYSE spokesman, said only broadcasters
engaged in "responsible business coverage" would be allowed
to use the trading floor. He said he was unable to explain
what that meant but that two other broadcasters, which he
declined to name, also had their credentials withdrawn.  "We
have to prioritise who we give the limited number of slots
[on the trading floor] to," Mr Pellecchia said.  Nasdaq has
declined to offer al-Jazeera a replacement space at its
office in mid-town Manhattan.  James Carey, professor of
journalism at Columbia University, said the NYSE's apparent
targeting of al-Jazeera was "a colossally stupid thing to do
with regard to the reputation of the exchange and to the
commonly held view of the rights of free expression."

Source: 
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c
=StoryFT&cid=1048313138960 - FT.com

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Hackers hit al-Jazeera sites
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Al-Jazeera's English-language and Arabic websites were
forced down Wednesday morning after a spate of suspected
hacker attacks.  Neither aljazeera.net, which gets the most
hits of any Arabic website in the world, nor
english.aljazeera.net, which launched on Monday, were
available this morning after suspected attacks crashed both
sites.  Speaking from the broadcaster's headquarters in
Doha, Qatar, communications manager Jihad Ali Ballout told
MediaGuardian.co.uk the company was doing everything
possible to get the sites up and running.  The sites are
most likely to have been hit by so-called "denial of
service" attacks, when sites are deliberately taken out by
extreme volumes of traffic.  The access problems followed
reports that the US hosting service that runs the
English-language site has buckled under pressure and agreed
not to host the site from the end of this month.

Source: http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,922264,00.html -
MediaGuardian.co.uk

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IFJ condemns Iraq television attack
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Tuesday night's bombing of Iraqi television headquarters by
allied forces was not an strike on a legitimate military
target, the Internation Federation of Journalists said.  The
IFJ says claims by United States military command spokesmen
that the television station was among "key regime command
and control assets" are untenable.  The organisation also
warned that journalists and media on all sides could become
targets for further attacks.  "We have already had media
casualties and this action will put journalists and media
even more at risk," said IFJ General Secretary Aidan White.
Iraqi Television was back on the air a few hours after the
military strikes.  Under international law, television and
radio stations may be targeted if they are being used for
military purposes.  However, the IFJ says that there has to
be evidence that this is the case before attacks are made.
The IFJ also dismissed suggestions that Saddam Hussein may
be using television broadcasts to send coded messages to his
own army.

Source: http://www.ifj.org/publications/press/pr/030326iraq.html - IFJ

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