] While expressing regret for Tuesday%u2019s media
] casualties, US military officials insisted that their
] forces were not targeting journalists.
]
] That may be so; still, the attacks on buildings known to
] house media personnel have given rise to doubts about the
] US military%u2019s real attitude toward news
] organizations such as Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV and
] others, such as Reuters, that took pains to cover both
] sides of the war.
]
] In the case of the Palestine Hotel incident, US military
] spokesmen claimed that the American tank had come under
] small-arms fire originating from the hotel. However,
] eyewitnesses said that before the shelling, they heard
] and saw no gunfire directed at the tank. BBC reporter
] Ragge Omaar added that the tank had aimed its cannon at
] the hotel for about 20 minutes before actually firing.

They shoot journalists, don’t they?

] A shell from a US tank had glanced off the building's
] 15th floor, turning concrete and metal into projectiles
] that killed two reporters and wounded two others in Room
] 1502. The victims had been on the balcony, watching
] gunfire between US and Iraqi forces 1.5 kilometres away.
]
] Most reporters assumed that an Iraqi irregular had taken
] a pot shot at the building with a shoulder-launched
] rocket grenade. However, a television camera had recorded
] a US tank turning its turret directly at the hotel and
] the blast from its muzzle.
]
] US military officials in Iraq and at the Pentagon said
] that a tank from the 3rd Infantry Division had fired on
] the hotel after reporting that "significant" enemy fire
] had come from a position in front of the 18-storey
] building. The Pentagon has long known that journalists
] are staying at the hotel and has warned of the dangers of
] remaining.

The killer attack journalists never saw coming

] Baghdad%u2014First the Americans killed the correspondent
] for Al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman.
]
] Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters
] Television bureau in Baghdad and killed one of its
] cameramen, father of an 8-year old son, and wounded three
] other staff members. Also fatally wounded was a cameraman
] for the Spanish television network Telecinco
]
] Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was
] it possible that the right word for these killings %u2014
] the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an Abrams
] tank - was murder?

Back in 2001, the U.S. fired a cruise missile at Al-Jazeera's office in Kabul, from which tapes of Osama bin Laden had been broadcast around the world.

No explanation was ever given for this extraordinary attack on the night before the city's "liberation." Al-Jazeera's Kabul correspondent, Tasir Alouni, was unhurt. By the strange coincidence of journalism, Alouni was in the Baghdad office yesterday to endure the U.S. Air Force's second attack on Al-Jazeera.

The French television channel France 3 had a crew in a neighbouring room and videotaped the tank on the bridge. Their tape shows a bubble of fire emerging from the tank gun's muzzle, the sound of a massive detonation, then pieces of paint-work falling past the camera as it vibrates with the impact.

In the Reuters bureau on the 15th floor, the shell exploded. It mortally wounded their Ukrainian cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, who was also filming the tanks, seriously wounded another members of the staff, Briton Paul Pasquale, and two other journalists, including Reuters' reporter Samia Nakhoul.

On the next floor, Telecinco's cameraman Jose Couso was also badly hurt and later died.

The U.S. responded with what all the evidence proves to be a straightforward lie. Gen. Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division — whose tanks were on the bridge — announced that his vehicles had come under rocket and rifle fire from snipers in the Palestine Hotel, that his tank had fired a single round at the hotel and that the gunfire had then ceased.

The general's statement, however, was untrue.

I was driving on a road between the tanks and the hotel at the moment the shell was fired and heard no shooting. The French videotape of the attack runs for more than four minutes and records absolute silence before the tank fires. And there were no snipers in the building.

Were these deaths mishap, or murder?

] This is a deeply shameful admission, but I have almost no
] idea how the war in Iraq is going. I don't read about it
] in the newspapers. I channel-hop with the TV remote to
] avoid seeing any footage. I can cope with the radio a
] little. In the car I switch on for long enough to catch a
] news bulletin ... Please God, the war is over ... It's
] not. I put on some music.
]
] I take no pride in this. In fact, I hate myself for it
] and fully accept that by owning up to it I will probably
] make other people hate me, too. A grown woman wallowing
] in a sea of denial is not a pretty sight but the more I
] try to drag myself out of it, the worse it gets.
]
] I find the anti-war rhetoric every bit as upsetting as
] the Boys Own stuff - even more so if it is juxtaposed
] with images of returning coffins draped in the Union
] flag. I think about what the wives and mothers of those
] young boys must be feeling if people say their deaths
] were pointless and get even more distressed. So I can't
] even describe myself as anti-war. I can't describe myself
] as anything.

I can't face another war report about dead children

] Reporters Without Borders called today on US defense
] secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide evidence that the
] offices of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera and the
] Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were not deliberately fired at
] by US forces earlier in the day in attacks that killed
] three journalists.
]
] "We are appalled at what happened because it was known
] that both places contained journalists," said the
] organisation's secretary-general Robert Ménard. "Film
] shot by the French TV station France 3 and descriptions
] by journalists show the neighbourhood was very quiet at
] that hour and that the US tank crew took their time,
] waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun
] before opening fire."

Reporters Without Borders accuses US military of deliberately firing at journalists

] A French television has revealed footage of a US strike
] on a hotel, which killed two journalists and injured
] several others in the Iraqi capital yesterday, showing an
] American tank targeting the hotel housing all foreign and
] Arab media and waiting at least two minutes before
] firing.
]
]
] The journalist working for France 3, Herve de Ploeg, who
] filmed the attack, refuted the American claim that Iraqi
] snipers were shooting from the hotel, as did all other
] journalists there.
]
]
] %u201CI did not hear any shots in the direction of the
] tank, which was stationed at the west entrance of the
] Al-Jumhuriya (Republic) bridge, 600 meters north-west of
] the hotel.%u201D
]
]
] A US commander claimed the tank was being fired at from
] the hotel.
]
]
] %u201CThe tank was receiving fire from the hotel, RPG
] (rocket-propelled grenade) and small-arms fire, and
] engaged with one tank round. The firing stopped,%u201D
] said General Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry
] Division.
]
]
] However, the film shows the tank%u2019s turret moving
] toward the Palestine Hotel, housing around 200 foreign
] and Arab journalists, and the gun carriage lifting and
] waiting at least two minutes before firing at the
] building.
]
]
] France 3 had previously set up two cameras in two rooms
] facing the bridge to capture footage

French TV Footage Reveals US Hit on Hotel ‘Deliberate’

] BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An international press freedoms
] group has accused the U.S. military of deliberately
] firing at journalists, killing three of them, when U.S.
] tanks rolled through Baghdad.
]
] Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday also called on
] U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide
] evidence that U.S. forces fired in self-defense, as the
] Pentagon said, and not deliberately.

Media deaths explanation sought - Apr. 9, 2003

] Jack Straw today declared he was "very concerned" about
] the killing of journalists in Iraq and said he would
] demand detailed information about their deaths.
]
] And the foreign secretary is seeking a detailed account
] of what happened yesterday when three journalists - two
] from Reuters and one from al-Jazeera - in two separate
] attacks by US forces on media headquarters in Baghdad.

The colonel in charge of the tank that fired said they had reacted after seeing enemy "binoculars" being used in the hotel.

The attacks on the hotel and the headquarters of al-Jazeera have fuelled speculation about a deliberate targeting of the media, particularly since the Pentagon had been told of the Arab satellite TV channel's exact location in Baghdad two months ago.

Straw to seek explanation for press deaths

] San Francisco -- A full-page ad Monday calling for the
] impeachment of President Bush sparked dozens of calls,
] letters and e-mails from readers angered that it would
] appear in The Chronicle.
]
] "We consider it an outrage that you accepted the
] advertisement to impeach our United States President,"
] said one letter faxed to Dick Rogers, readers'
] representative for the paper. "I find this type of
] advertising anti-American and in poor taste," complained
] another reader.
]
] "Most of the calls were from people who said it was
] distasteful to run the ad while our troops were dying
] overseas," Rogers said. "There weren't many calls in
] favor."

Readers mad that Chronicle ran ad to impeach Bush / Antiwar group paid about $45,000

] 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."

FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY: Official Story Vs. Eyewitness Account