Journalists: Victims to their duties

28 Nov 2011, 4:48 pm   -   Source: SBS - Gary Cox
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It's been a treacherous year for journalists. In hot-spots around the world, 106 of our colleagues have been killed - lives lived and lost in the service of the truth. SBS' Gary Cox takes a closer look at how difficult and dangerous a journalist's job can be.

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It's been a treacherous year for journalists. In hot-spots around the world, 106 of our colleagues have been killed - lives lived and lost in the service of the truth.

The most dangerous place on earth for the Fourth Estate-- Pakistan.

Nine journalists have been murdered there because powerful forces wanted them silenced.

Prominent investigative journalist, Syed Saleem Shahazad, disappeared two days after writing about this al Qaeda attack on a naval base in Karachi.

Despite being repeatedly threatened, he was well known for scathing reports about the infiltration by Al Qaeda into Pakistan's military...

His mutilated body was found in a canal.

There was no investigation, no arrest and no justice.

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists' Tahir Javed Rathore says it’s difficult to seek justice when one of their own is harmed.

“We always raise out voice when one of our journalists are killed. We feel ourselves that we are not alone struggling here for the protection of journalists, struggling here for the freedom of speech and right to write stories freely ad we have a friends in 65 or 70 countries,” he said.

As the Pakistani press mourn another colleague, the International Federation of Journalists is working with local unions. All journalist murders in Pakistan, apart from that of American Daniel Pearl, have gone unpunished.

Every November the IFJ holds a global Impunity campaign, to highlight the failure of governments to bring the killers to justice.

It's a mammoth task, violation to media rights can take many forms, down the barrel of a gun, police intimidation, or attacks from an angry mob.

The Mubarak Regime had demonised western media, and to a frenzied crowd, journalists were fair game.

Foreign Correspondent Mark Corcoran experienced this first hand.

“I was set upon by a mob, it was like a flying rugby tackle by a mob. My fear was that if we went to the ground, that's when the knives would come out,” he said.

The ABC's Foreign Correspondent team sheltered in a tourist shop for hours before they were able to leave -- a luxury not afforded Egyptian reporters.

“Whatever we face, our Egyptian colleagues face 10-fold. We're there for 10 days, a fortnight or what ever. We eventually go home or back to the bureau or back to home base, our Egyptian colleagues have to live through it. We have endured it for many years and continue to do so post Tahrir Square. Things didn't get better,” he said.

SBS Dateline Video Journalist Yaara Bou-Melhem went to Syria in December to find out what happened.

“I went into a Syria at a time when the uprisings hadn't occurred yet and the feeling I had going in was one of dread, I was going in on a tourist visa, I wasn't going officially and I was doing a story that was clearly very sensitive,” Ms Bou-Melhem said.

Others haven't lived to tell the story.

Award-winning photojournalist, Tim Hetherington, had a relentless drive to document the impact of war.

"Often when I am working in a very pressured situation, I can almost flick the off switch and go into a default of filming and later I come to and it shocks me what I have done. That is just something I have been able to do. And that is perhaps why I am good at what I do but it does have the side that it is very dangerous,” he once said.

Tim's last twitter post read: In besieged Libyan city of Misrata- Indiscriminate shelling by Gaddafi forces, no sign of NATO.
 
He was killed by mortar fire.

2011 has also offered stories of triumph and resilience.

Amid the rubble of the Christchurch earthquake, the Press Newspaper was still fit to print with staff managing to put the paper out the following day.

“We know the value of a newspaper to the community, without power you have no TV news, you can't plug your lap top in or PC and find out what's going on. So the paper being delivered becomes fundamental to the community,” Christchurch Press Newspaper Editor, Andrew Holden said.

Some reassuring news in a year that has left the industry with 106 fewer journalists.

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