'Journos should stay out of Iraq'
2005-05-03 09:06
Paris - Nearly 60% of respondents in a French poll say journalists should stay out of Iraq, about the same percentage who say the Paris government isn't doing enough to free a French reporter held hostage there, a media advocacy group reports.
Released for World Press Freedom Day on Tuesday, the poll for Reporters Without Borders found public frustration with the centre-right government's effort to win the release of French reporter Florence Aubenas.
Robert Menard, the group's president, said it would release a separate report on Tuesday on the 56 journalists or assistants killed in Iraq since the war began more than two years ago - only seven fewer than during the conflict in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975.
"It goes to show how we're in a period of violence that is beyond common measure," he said, "when more people are taking aim at journalists, and wars are more and more dangerous for the press".
Aubenas, a reporter for Liberation newspaper, and her Iraqi guide Hussein Hanoun disappeared on January 5 after leaving her Baghdad hotel. On March 1, a videotape was made public in which she appeared making a weary and distraught appeal for help.
In the poll, 57% of respondents said the government hasn't done enough to win her freedom, with 29% saying it was doing the "right amount" and 3% saying too much. The rest - 11% - did not respond.
The French government has been leading a secret effort to free Aubenas. Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said last month that French officials are facing "difficult conditions" largely because of violence on the ground.
The dangers in Iraq
Fifty-nine percent responded that journalists should not continue going to Iraq because of the risks, while 37% said they should. Four percent did not respond.
The telephone poll of 1 000 adults, timed for the 15th Annual World Freedom Day, was conducted April 26-27 by the CSA agency. No margin of error was provided.
The Paris-based group also published its annual report on press freedom, saying Iraq remains the worst place to be a journalist and that new threats have emerged in places like Africa and Bangladesh.
The report brings together figures released by the group in January - namely that 53 journalists were killed on the job in 2004, the most in a decade. Another 107 were imprisoned as of January 1.
The study provides a country-by-country look at the threats to journalists. New media "predators" have emerged among governments or opposition groups in Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Nigeria, it said, calling 2004 "a year of mourning".
Among the few bright spots were Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, where "velvet revolutions" opened the way for greater press freedom, the group said. But it expressed concern about legal efforts in the United States to force some reporters to name their sources.
For a second straight year, Iraq was the most dangerous country for journalists, with 19 reporters and 12 of their assistants killed there last year, the group said.
So far this year, 22 journalists have been killed on the job - nine of them in Iraq, the group said.
- AP