Session 3: TRIBUTE TO JOURNALISTS AND MEDIA WORKERS KILLED IN ACTION & LAUNCH OF "DYING TO TELL THE STORY"
a new book funded by INSI and a tribute to those members of the media profession who died in and around Iraq in March, April and May of 2003
by Chris Cramer of CNN.
Chris Cramer: Good afternoon my name is Chris Cramer of CNN. I think it's very curious that until very recently and certainly in the last five or six years the issue of safety being centre stage at a conference like this was considered a curiosity. Many people thought that safety had no particular place in our industry because most of us just did what we did, we gain some experience along the way if we were lucky, we learned some things from our colleagues and we got on with it. Well not any more. 2003 has been a frightful year for this profession as you have just seen. According to the Committee for the Protection of journalists 60 colleagues dead so far this year and we have two months to go. A very worrying trend, an Iraqi journalist murdered a few days ago it in Mosul because of his work.
Two or three weeks ago the rather disgusting case of a journalist on the Ivory Coast who was murdered by a policeman who misunderstood his boss's remark that he should "get rid" of the journalist at the front desk so he went outside and shot him. Many of us had grave forebodings about the events in March and April this year. We figured that with thousands of our colleagues in harm's way there would be a quite dreadful death-toll or injury toll, a very bad and very prescient feeling on our behalf. 16 dead, two missing almost certainly dead, three in the weeks immediately following, several more since. If you care to extrapolate the death toll in our industry in those few weeks in March and April and May and apply it to the 12 or 13 years in the Vietnam war you come to the incredible figure of 2500 media dead, that was our death toll earlier this year. So unashamedly I want to talk about a document, a book called "Dying To Tell The Story".
 It's a tribute but it's much more than a tribute. It's been published by the new International News Safety Institute, it's painful, it's traumatic and it's frightening to read. It's a historical document which I commend to you. Our colleagues were not members of the armed forces, they were volunteers. The book has been put together by their bosses, their peers, their friends, their colleagues and for many of them it was very very very difficult to write it. Many described it to me as a cathartic experience but it's not just that important document about our colleagues who died. There are also contributions from Vaughan Smith about the freelance industry, some might say until fairly recently on the fringes of the debate about safety. A terrifying chapter from CNN's Brent Sadler concerning the very controversial incident concerning the use of armed security guards and their decision to fire back when the CNN crew came under attack. I invite you to read that chapter before you draw a conclusion about their actions and the rights or wrongs of those actions. It's a hair-raising few pages. A contribution from our chairman Nik Gowing about our colleagues caught in the crossfire in the wrong place at the wrong time as a result of screw ups or whatever you choose to ascribe to those particular activities. And the book ends with a chapter from Dr Anthony Feinstein here this afternoon, probably one of the world's leading authorities on stress and anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder among members of our profession. A very important way to end at this book. So unashamedly a book plug, its here please buy it, please read it, you will better understand why safety and the debate that is about to start is now centre stage in our industry. Thank you.
Transcript by Tony Callaghan
Photo Credits: Piotr Azia, EBU; Balint Eder, Brill Productions; and Mark Milstein, North Foto
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