Reporters as targets

last updated 8 January 2015

Baghdad

Masked gunmen burst into the studios of Baghdad’s Shaabiya TV station last week and shot dead seven journalists and two guards, most of them as they slept. Staff often slept at the studio because of the late work hours. The early-morning attack was the single deadliest assault on reporters in the Iraq war—but it was not an isolated incident. Reporters Without Borders lists Iraq as the most dangerous place for journalists to work. Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, 118 reporters and media staffers, mostly Iraqis, have been killed, compared with 68 during World War II and 66 during the Vietnam conflict. “We’re working in hell,” said Ammar Karim, a reporter with the director who filmed an anti-colonial masterpiece. “They’re targeting journalists directly, whatever their affiliations are.”