Media coverage of events in Syria.

[Jan Klimkowski]

"Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind," Thomson wrote in a Channel 4 News website blog published on Friday/ morning.
"We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man's land," he added.
"At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I've experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover. Another dead end.
"There was no option but to drive back out on to the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we'd been led in on. Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we reappeared.
"I'm quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus."
Thomson said this conviction was only strengthened half an hour later when "our four friends in the same beaten-up black car suddenly pulled out of a side street, blocking us from the UN vehicles ahead".
"The UN duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town. Eventually we got out too and on the right route, back to Damascus," he added.
"In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what's the big deal in sending a van full of journalists into the killing zone? It was nothing personal."

Alex Thomson is a proper journalist. So his claims have real power.

Who remembers the American military slaughter of reporters at the beginning of the second Gulf War?

Death

Terry Lloyd died on 22 March 2003 while covering the events taking place during the 2003 invasion of Iraq for ITN. Working as an independent reporter not "embedded" with U.S. or UK forces, Lloyd and his team of two cameramen and an interpreter were caught in crossfire during fighting near the Shatt Al Basra Bridge in Basra, Iraq,[2] between U.S. and Iraqi forces. His body and that of his Lebanese interpreter, Hussein Osman, were recovered and it was later discovered they had both been shot by U.S. forces on the road to Basra.[3] The French cameraman Frédéric Nérac is still officially classed as missing, presumed dead. The Belgian cameraman Daniel Demoustier survived. Terry Lloyd's funeral was reported on ITN news bulletins by Mark Austin on ITV and Samira Ahmed on Channel 4.

[edit] Investigation

The Royal Military Police (RMP) carried out an investigation into the incident. Major Kay Roberts, an RMP investigator, testified at the inquest on Terry Lloyd that a videotape of the incident, taken by a cameraman attached to the U.S. unit that killed Terry Lloyd, had been edited before it had been passed on to the British investigation. The RMP forensics expert who examined the tape concluded that about 15 minutes had been removed from the start of the recording. Roberts testified at the inquest that she was sent the tape "some months" after the incident[4] and that the she was told by the U.S. authorities that the footage they handed over was "everything that they had".

The ITN team were driving in two cars both clearly marked as press vehicles. Frédéric Nérac and Hussein Osman were in the car behind Terry Lloyd and Daniel Demoustier. They encountered an Iraqi convoy at the Shatt Al Basra Bridge in Basra, Iraq. Nérac and Osman were taken out of their car and made to get into an Iraqi vehicle. The British investigation into the incident established the convoy was escorting a Baath Party leader to Basra. American forces shot at the Iraqi convoy, killing Osman: Nérac's body has not been recovered, but investigation suggests it is unlikely he could have survived.[5]

Frédéric Nérac's wife Fabienne Mercier-Nérac testified that she had received a letter from U.S. authorities who denied being at the scene when the ITN News team was attacked.

Demoustier and Lloyd, still in the ITN car, were caught in crossfire between the Iraqi Republican Guard and U.S. forces. Lloyd was hit by an Iraqi bullet, an injury from which he could have recovered. He was put into a civilian minibus that had stopped to pick up casualties. Forensic evidence presented at the inquest shows U.S. forces shot at the minibus after it had turned to leave the area, killing Terry Lloyd outright. Demoustier survived.

[edit] Inquest

The inquest on Terry Lloyd's death was held in October 2006 in Oxfordshire, and lasted eight days, recording the verdict on 13 October 2006. The Assistant Deputy Coroner, Andrew Walker, recorded a verdict of unlawful killing by U.S. forces, and announced he would write to the Director of Public Prosecutions asking for him to investigate the possibility of bringing charges.

Andrew Walker formally cleared ITN of any blame for Terry Lloyd's death, and said that in his view the U.S. tanks had been first to open fire on the ITN crew's two vehicles. However, in the same document, he says he "was unable to determine whether the bullets that killed Lloyd in southern Iraq on 22 March 2003, were fired by U.S. ground forces or helicopters." Lloyd "would probably have survived the first [Iraqi] bullet wound" but was killed as he was being carried away from the fighting in the civilian minibus. Walker said: "If the vehicle was perceived as a threat, it would have been fired on before it did a U-turn. This would have resulted in damage to the front of the vehicle. I have no doubt it was the fact that the vehicle stopped to pick up survivors that prompted the Americans to fire on that vehicle."[6] The National Union of Journalists said Terry Lloyd's killing was a war crime.[7]

The likelihood is that Lloyd, Osman and Nerac were killed for being in a part of the war zone they weren't meant to see. It was during the second Gulf War that the practice of "embedding" journalists within military units became essentially obligatory. The grisly fate of Lloyd, Osman and Nerac was a stark warning to war correspondents not to leave their "embedded" sanctuary.

In other words, war correspondents were told to stop being reporters and instead become a part of the military propaganda machine.