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The New York Times brings us a somber reminder this morning that with the deaths yesterday of two journalists working for CBS the Iraq war has become the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times.
Since the start of the war three years ago, 71 journalists have been killed in Iraq, not including another two dozen members of news media support staffs. In addition at least 42 journalists have been kidnapped, according to Reporters Without Borders.
The number of dead is more than the 69 members of the press killed in all of World War II and the 63 who perished in the Vietnam war.
“It is absolutely striking,” Ann Cooper, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told the Times. “We talk to veteran war correspondents who have covered everything going back to Vietnam and through Bosnia. Even those who have seen a number of different wars say they have never seen something like this conflict.”
The CBS crew of three – two of them now dead and a third in critical condition – had set out on Monday morning to do what reporters do: spend a few hours with soldiers, intent on giving the audience back in the United States a glimpse of what Memorial Day was like for warriors far from home and family barbecues or a day at the beach.
All three had made multiple trips to Iraq and all three repeatedly volunteered to return.
On the day after yet another Memorial Day, as this war with no end convulses on into its fourth year, we salute the CBS three, and their close to 100 fallen colleagues.
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