'Mouse journalism' is the only way we can report on Iraq - Fisk

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Thu, 20 Oct 2005 19:42:37 -0400

'Mouse journalism' is the only way we can report on Iraq - Fisk

 

 

 

 

`Mouse journalism' is the only way we can report on Iraq — Fisk

 

Published: Thursday, October 13, 2005

 

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/131005/mouse_journalism_is

 

By Matthew Lewin

 

The Independent's famously intrepid Middle East correspondent Robert

Fisk has revealed that the situation in Iraq is now so dangerous that

he doesn't know whether he can go on reporting from the country.

 

Fisk, who has previously accused colleagues of practising " hotel

journalism " in Iraq, said that " mouse journalism " is now the best he

can do in the country.

 

Fisk, whose new history of the Middle East, The Great War for

Civilisation, has just been published, described mouse journalism as

the practice of popping up at the scene of an event and staying just

long enough to get the story, before the men with guns arrive.

 

Speaking at a bookshop in Golders Green, he said: " You cannot imagine

just how bad things are in Iraq.

 

" A few weeks ago, I went to see a man whose son was killed by the

Americans, and I was in his house for five minutes before armed men

turned up in the street outside.

 

" He had to go and reason with them not to take me away. And this was

an ordinary Baghdad suburb, not the Sunni Triangle or Fallujah.

 

" It has got to the stage where, for example, when I went to have a

look at the scene of a huge bomb in a bus station, I jumped out of the

car and took two pictures before I was surrounded by a crowd of

enraged Iraqis.

 

" I jumped back in the car and fled. I call that `mouse journalism' —

and that's all we can do now.

 

" If I go to see someone in any particular location, I give myself 12

minutes, because that is how long I reckon it takes a man with a

mobile phone to summon gunmen to the scene in a car.

 

" So, after 10 minutes I am out. Don't be greedy. That's what reporting

is like in Iraq. "

 

He continued: " This country is nowhell — a disaster. You cannot

imagine how bad it is. Nothing of the reporting I see generally,

except The Guardian and Patrick Cockburn in The Independent, really

conveys the absolute agony and distress of Iraq.

 

" The Ministry of Health, which is partly run by Americans, will not

give out any figures for civilian casualties; staff are just not

allowed to give us these figures.

 

" When I went to the city morgue in Baghdad one day nearly four weeks

ago, I arrived at 9am and there were nineviolent death corpses there.

 

" By midday there were 26 corpses. When I managed to get access to the

computer system of the mortuary, I discovered that in July 1,100

Iraqis had been killed in Baghdad alone.

 

" Multiply that across Iraq and you are talking about 3,000 a month or

more, which means 36,000 a year.

 

" So these figures claiming 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties are not

necessarily conservative at all. But no-one wants to report on this.

 

" One of the delights of the occupying powers is that the journalists

cannot move. When I travel outside Baghdad by road it takes me two

weeks to plan it, because the roads are infested with insurgents,

checkpoints, hooded men and throat-cutters. That's what it's like.

 

" It is almost impossible to get access to free information outside

Baghdad or Basra. Most of the reporters who can travel are doing so as

members of military convoys with armour to protect them.

 

" The last time I travelled to Najaf, the road was littered with

burned-out American vehicles, smashed police vehicles, abandoned

checkpoints and armed men. That's Iraq today — it's in a state of

anarchy, and many areas of Baghdad are in fact now in insurgent hands. "

 

He added: " This is a war the like of which I have never reported before.

 

Over and over again, we are escaping with our lives because we are lucky.

 

And it is getting much worse, not better — don't believe what Blair is

telling you.

 

" It is very sad to have to say that I don't know if we can go on

reporting in Iraq. I don't know if I can personally keep on going back.

 

" This last trip there was so dangerous and frightening, I actually

said to some people that we were going to have to debate whether the

risks are worth it all.