By: Greg Mitchell Six Iraqis who have worked in the McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) Baghdad bureau received the International Women's Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award on Tuesday at a luncheon at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Some of them have written for the "Inside Iraq" blog that McClatchy publishes online. E&P has reprinted dozens of these blog postings, all written by Iraqi staffers, in the past six months.
In introducing the six McClatchy reporters ? Shatha al Awsy, Zaineb Obeid, Huda Ahmed, Ban Adil Sarhan, Alaa Majeed, and Sahar Issa ? ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff said: "These six Iraqi women have reported the war in Baghdad from inside their hearts. They have watched as the war touched the lives of their neighbors and friends, and then they bore witness as it reached into the lives of each and every one of them.
"All the while, they have been the backbone of the McClatchy bureau, sleeping with bulletproof vests and helmets by their beds at night, taking different routes to work each day, trying to keep their employment by a Western news organization secret," said Woodruff, who himself was grievously wounded while covering the war in Iraq.
"All have lost family members or close friends," he continued, according to an account published by McClatchy yesterday. "All have had their lives threatened. All have had narrow escapes with death."
Issa described a visit to the morgue in a blog item that was also published by E&P: "We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed. From the waist down was all they could give us. We identified him by the cell phone in his pants' pocket. 'If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourself. We don't know what he looks like.' Now begins the horror that surpasses anything I could have possibly envisioned."
Others honored on Tuesday: Lydia Cacho, a Mexican journalist who exposed a pedophilia ring in Cancun and was seized by police; and Serkalem Fasil of Ethiopia, who was jailed for her criticism of the Ethiopian government.
"This was a day to honor the courage of Ban, Huda, Alaa, Zaineb, Shatha and Sahar ? and by extension all of the Iraqis who have worked for us in Baghdad," said David Westphal, McClatchy's Washington Editor, in an article for McClatchy. "Only the handful of you who have worked in Baghdad can fully glimpse what it means to be an Iraqi journalist working for an American news organization. The rest of us can only stand in awe, and express our thanks for all they have given, and risked, to tell the story of their country."
The New York Times carried an editorial today on the six women from a rival news organization. Here is a major portion
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Speaking for the six, Sahar Issa had a powerful message that we wanted to share with our readers:
?To be a journalist in violence-ridden Iraq today, ladies and gentlemen, is not a matter lightly undertaken. Every path is strewn with danger, every checkpoint, every question a direct threat.
?Every interview we conduct may be our last. So much is happening in Iraq. So much that is questionable. So much that we, as journalists, try to fathom and portray to the people who care to know.
?In every society there is good and bad. Laws regulate the conduct of the society. My country is now lawless. Innocent blood is shed every day, seemingly without purpose. Hundreds of thousands have been killed for seemingly no reason. It is our responsibility to do our utmost to acquire the answers, to dig them up with our bare hands if we must.
?But that knowledge comes at a dear price, for since the war started, four and half years ago, an average of about one reporter and media assistant killed every week is something we have to live with.
?We live double lives. None of our friends or relatives know what we do. My children must lie about my profession. They cannot under any circumstance boast of my accomplishments, and neither can I. Every morning, as I leave my home, I look back with a heavy heart, for I may not see it again ? today may be the day that the eyes of an enemy will see me for what I am, a journalist, rather than the appropriately bewildered elderly lady who goes to look after ailing parents, across the river every day. Not for a moment can I let down my guard.
?I smile as I give my children hugs and send them off to school; it?s only after they turn their backs to me that my eyes fill to overflowing with the knowledge that they are just as much at risk as I am.
?So why continue? Why not put down my proverbial pen and sit back? It?s because I?m tired of being branded a terrorist: tired that a human life lost in my county is no loss at all. This is not the future I envision for my children. They are not terrorists, and their lives are not valueless. I have pledged my life ? and much, much more, in an effort to open a window through which the good people in the international community may look in and see us for what we are, ordinary human beings with ordinary aspirations, and not what we have been portrayed to be.
?Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to reach out. Help us to build bridges of understanding and acceptance. Even though the war has cast a dark shadow upon your nation and mine ? it is never too late.?
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