Collateral Murder

[Sqrl]

MrBubbles said:

Sqrl said:

MrBubbles said:
i think it is good that armed terrorists died here. the reuters guys hooked up with armed terrorists...whether for a "good story" or for more sinister reasons is irrelevant...if you are hanging out with terrorists then you run the risk of being shot.

This kind of goes back to the point I was making about journalist reporting their locations.

But it is fair to point out that he may have done so and the information may well have been misshandled.  We don't know.

 

I know people like to draw conclusions and bundle things into nice neat piles...but seriously...we don't know so much about this case.

 

Any conclusions are tentative at best.

ive seen some of the BBC things when they go visit some of the taliban.  they are generally blindfolded and agree not to reveal any sort of information about the possible location of the where theyve been taken.  you tell people you are with some terrorists and it can put the journalists lives at risk and any others intending to work in the region.

so it would seem unlikely that they would report their whereabouts.  its dangerous working in a warzone and you take risks to get the story.

Thats the point exactly though.  If they didn't report where they were so they could have unfettered access to insurgents and get their point of view on the battlefield then that has risks to it as you correctly pointed out.  A war cannot be put on hold while journalist go get a scoop, and they know as much and accept the risk implicitly by participating in the process.

Still we don't know if that happened here...if they notified authorities and the information was mishandled then that doesn't fall on either the journalists or the gunners/pilots of the gunship and in fact falls on someone else nobody has even pointed to yet. 

Bottom line is we are ill-equipped to judge what happened.  The best we can do is give benefit of the doubt that the journalist was there on legitimate journalistic business and say it was unfortunate that he and the children got cought in the line of fire.

The rest should really be left to a formal investigation that will have access to all of the facts and will have all of the relevant context.