CBS Cameraman held as Insurgent
By streiff Posted in User Blogs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The war in Iraq has brought to the fore a clear fault line, bordering on a chasm, between the objectives of the nation and the behavior of the media.
We've addressed these before as they pertained to Eason Jordan and the media in general.
Today the US military announced that it had detained a CBS cameraman as a suspected insurgent.
Nothing really unexpected here. Wretchard has written extensively about the obvious collusion between AP photographers and the insurgents which resulted in the AP winning a Pulitzer Prize.
We don't yet know if the captured CBS employee was embedded with the insurgents. The Geneva Conventions, however, is clear that a journalist can be treated as a combatant if they take any action that compromises their status as a civilian. Being captured in a firefight would at first blush make a convincing case that the journalist was accompanying the insurgents.