"Killing the Messengers"

Last week, journalist Mark Danner appeared on On the Media and spoke with co-host Brooke Gladstone about the recent bombing by insurgents of the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels in Baghdad. The hotels are the well-known home to many foreign correspondents in Iraq. Danner, who recently stayed at the compound that houses the two hotels, told Gladstone:

It is probably, with the exception of the Green Zone itself, the most highly guarded site in Baghdad. And there's no way you can attack the Palestine and the Sheraton without knowing that you're attacking a key point of the foreign press. So it seems to me that one of the things they were probably trying to do is get maximum amount of attention by bombing this particular target. And, of course, it did get enormous coverage.

Danner also commented on the difficulty of reporting in Iraq and journalists' increasing reliance on the internet for gathering information:

Well, that is true that various groups in the insurgency do have direct access to the Internet. And the press itself, as the direct access that they have on the ground has become increasingly constrained, has relied on the Internet to get news of what's happening, to see the announcements that Zarqawi and other groups make claiming responsibility, and also, in some cases, to use videotapes of attacks, which are very frequently put up on the Internet by these groups. So it's true that the monopoly on information that the traditional press has had has now been broken.