Who would want this job?
A reporter in Texas has been in jail for five months. A photographer was found dead in San Francisco. And more reporters and photographers have died in Afghanistan than American soldiers.
The news media doesn’t normally rank high on those surveys of most respected professions, but you can’t deny that the commitment level of some in the news game is downright amazing. And while there have always been many critics of news coverage, and always will be, we are all better off due to the sacrifice and passion of many professional journalists.
Vanessa Leggett, a 33-year-old writer, has been jailed since July 20, when she refused to obey a subpoena from the U.S. attorney’s office ordering her to give up all the research she had gathered on Robert Angleton, a multimillionaire Houston bookie who was accused of murdering his wife, according to the Texas Monthly. Since 1997 Leggett had been interviewing people connected with the Angleton case in hopes of writing a book. Assistant U.S. attorney Terry Clark, wanted to listen to every interview she had taped, see every transcript, and get a list of everyone she had interviewed, including those who talked to her only if she promised them anonymity. Clark went so far as to demand that Leggett not be allowed to keep any copy of her tapes and transcripts for herself, which essentially would keep her from writing a book. When she resisted the subpoena, Clark persuaded a federal judge, at a hearing that the public was not allowed to attend, to jail her on a civil contempt citation.
Leggett is standing up for principle and winning the admiration of many journalists around the country in the process.
On Sunday, Luci S. Houston, a 43-year-old photographer for the San Jose Mercury News, was found dead in her locked car parked about two miles from her Oakland home. Detectives said the car had been parked there for days. They are investigating the death as a homicide, but have no suspects and have not disclosed a motive, according to the Mercury News.
Now, there’s no evidence suggesting Houston’s death had anything to do with her profession, but it does make you wonder.
The occupational hazards for journalists are most severe internationally, of course. Eight journalists have been killed in Afghanistan since Nov. 11. And these aren’t the result of crossfire or indiscriminate bombings either. They are intentional, direct hits by Taliban forces or the result of robberies. Take the latest murder, for example. Swedish TV photographer Ulf Stromberg was shot and killed Tuesday by young men who robbed the home he was staying in with other journalists in Taliquan, a northern city near Kunduz that was taken by the Northern Alliance two weeks ago.
While the U.S. media has yet to lose anyone in Afghanistan, there have been several close calls. A day after Afghan gunmen shot and killed four journalists for European news media near Kabul, two staff correspondents for Long Island’s Newsday and a correspondent for Cox Newspapers were attacked on the main highway heading east from Kabul, threatened with execution and robbed before being released.
Matthew McAllester, Newsday’s Middle East correspondent, and staff photographer Moises Saman were traveling on the main Kabul-Jalalabad road with Larry Kaplow, a reporter for the Cox newspaper chain, when three gunmen stopped them in the virtual no-man’s land east of the capital. According to Newsday accounts, they were ordered out of their truck and the gunmen searched them, taking about $120 from the journalists. The gunmen then trained their weapons on their captives, evidently intent on carrying out an execution.
The journalists’ quick-thinking Afghan translator set off on a long and ultimately persuasive argument for sparing their lives, despite what one of the gunmen said was a general instruction from mullahs, possibly affiliated with the Taliban, that the gunmen kill as many foreigners as they could lay their hands on, McAllester said.
Most of the journalists want to be in Afghanistan. They want to report truth and accuracy about who is dying, where the bombs are hitting and how the local Afghan people are responding. They also must enjoy the thrill that comes with working on the edge.
Call them committed, or call them crazy, but to know that regular civilian personnel are laying their lives on the line in the pursuit of information, and suddenly that two-hour commute to work Wednesday morning in the snow doesn’t seem so bothersome anymore.
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