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NEW YORK
- April 4 - A recent Washington Post article describing the
killing of civilians by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint outside
the Iraqi town of Najaf proved that "embedded" journalists
do have the ability to report on war in all its horror. But
the rejection by some U.S. outlets of Post correspondent William
Branigin's eyewitness account in favor of the Pentagon's sanitized
version suggests that some journalists prefer not to report
the harsh reality of war.
The Pentagon
version was the one first reported in U.S. media-- sometimes
in terms that assumed that the official account was factual.
"What happened there, the van with a number of individuals
in it...approached the checkpoint," reported MSNBC's Carl
Rochelle (3/31/03). "They were told to stop by the members
of the 3rd Infantry Division. They did not stop, warning shots
were fired. Still they came on. They fired into the engine of
the van. Still it came on, so they began opening fire on the
van itself."
Fox's John
Gibson (3/31/03) presented the story in similar terms: "We
warn these cars to stop. If they don't stop, fire warning shots.
If they don't stop then, fire into the engine. If they don't
stop then, fire into the cab. And today some guys killed some
civilians after going through all those steps."
But later
on the night of March 31, the Post released its story on the
shooting that would appear in the April 1 edition of the paper.
Branigin's report described U.S. Army Capt. Ronny Johnson's
attempts to avoid the incident as he directed his troops via
radio from the checkpoint:
"'Fire
a warning shot,' he ordered as the vehicle kept coming. Then,
with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm
machine-gun round into its radiator. 'Stop [messing] around!'
Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he still
saw no action being taken. Finally, he shouted at the top of
his voice, 'Stop him, Red 1, stop him!'
"That
order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25mm cannon
fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half
a dozen shots were heard in all.
"'Cease
fire!' Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into
his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared
at the platoon leader, 'You just [expletive] killed a family
because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!'" ---
The Post's
account is significant because it suggests that, in fact, military
procedures may not have been properly followed at the checkpoint.
Several U.S. papers, including the New York Daily News, Boston
Globe, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times and San Francisco Chronicle,
managed to include the discrepancy between the official Pentagon
account and the Post's eyewitness description in their reports
on the Najaf killings in their April 1 editions. The New York
Times, however, did not, instead running a story that only presented
the official version, under a headline that stated as a definite
fact that adequate warning had been given before soldiers opened
fire: "Failing to Heed Warning, 7 Iraqi Women and Children
Die."
While it's
possible that the New York Times, unlike other East Coast papers
like the Daily News and the Globe, had a deadline that did not
allow it to include information from the Branigin article, the
Times ran a follow-up article on April 2-- "U.S. Military
Chiefs Express Regret Over Civilian Deaths"-- that still
omitted any mention of the description of the incident in the
Washington Post. The piece, by Christopher Marquis, described
the victims as being "killed when their van apparently
failed to stop after orders by American guards." It rehearsed
the official version of events ("that soldiers fired warning
shots to stop the van, then fired into the engine, but that
the van continued forward, forcing troops to fire into the passenger
compartment") and quoted Gen. Richard Myers on "our
policy of doing all we can to spare civilian lives"-- all
without mentioning the contradictory firsthand account from
the Post.
The Times
was not the only outlet that either overlooked or chose to ignore
the reporting that undermined the official story on the killing.
NPR's Nick Spicer reported on the April 1 All Things Considered--
which aired at least 18 hours after the Post story broke-- that
"what we're hearing here at CENTCOM is that troops fired
a warning shot as a vehicle approached a checkpoint. The vehicle
did not stop. It then fired at the engine block. The vehicle
continued. And then they fired in the passenger compartment
and they killed seven women and children." Branigin's account
was not mentioned.
The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution summarized the story thus on April 2: "Seven
Iraqi women and children are killed at an Army checkpoint 20
miles north of Najaf after they failed to heed warning shots."
The Houston Chronicle reported on April 1, without qualification,
that "U.S. troops...opened fire on a civilian vehicle that
refused their order to halt and ignored warning shots."
Although the story cited the Washington Post on the number of
people killed in the incident, it ignored the parts of the Post
account that contradicted the official account that the Chronicle
treated as fact.
Even the
Washington Post itself, in an April 2 story by a different reporter,
failed to mention Branigin's reporting when it reiterated the
official description of the incident: "At another checkpoint
on Monday, U.S. troops blasted an approaching vehicle carrying
as many as 16 people, most of them women and children, in the
belief that an attack was underway. Ten people in the vehicle
died. Soldiers said later that they fired warning shots that
were ignored."
To read
the Post's report on the shooting, go to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61229-2003Mar31.html
If you'd
like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, contact
information is available on FAIR's website: http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html
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