BAGHDAD – At dawn, a guard at the fledgling Iraqi television station watched helplessly as a death squad - more than a dozen heavily armed men with silencers on their pistols and many with Iraqi police uniforms on their backs - rolled up in a convoy to Al Shabiya TV.
He immediately phoned the station's anchorman, Firas al-Rikabi, at his nearby home. The guard was beside himself, warning Mr. Rikabi to "try to run away." After 75 minutes, the gunmen left the station, and Rikabi arrived to find 11 of his journalist colleagues dead.
No one heard a single shot.
The professional hit, conducted last month, delivered one of this year's heaviest blows to Iraqi journalists. Amid the swirl of sectarian bloodletting and insurgent attacks, the Iraqi media faces the treacherous task of navigating the political differences between parties, and widespread ignorance about their role.
The label "independent" media in Iraq has become a death sentence, in what has become the world's most dangerous environment for local journalists. Already this year 55 Iraqi journalists have been killed - more than any other year - and four remain hostages.
Click on the headline to read more of Scott Peterson's article in The Christian Science Monitor
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
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