The Case of Bilal Hussein

Last week, Associated Press photographer (and alleged insurgent collaborator) Bilal Hussein “was released from custody”:http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8VUGK500&show_article=1 after an Iraqi tribunal decided his case fell under an amnesty law passed earlier in 2008. The United States military had accused Hussein of working with insurgent groups in Anbar Province, in part because of “his uncanny ability repeatedly to photograph insurgents in action”:http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/04/020258.php.
I don’t know if he’s guilty or not, and he deserves the presumption of innocence. Either way, his case brings attention to an issue most consumers of news from Iraq rarely consider: the fact that large media companies–the Associated Press and other news wire agencies and newspapers–work with some sketchy characters in Iraq.
Iraq is full of such sketchy characters, as everyone knows, and large media companies require an enormous staff and network of locals to produce daily news coverage. They can’t cover breaking news every day in a low-intensity war zone without them, especially if violent activity–car bombs, fire fights, assassinations, and the like–are the bulk of what makes up the news. Someone is killed almost every day in Iraq, but the chances that an individual writer or photographer will happen to be present as an eyewitness are minuscule. Reporters who cover breaking daily news spend much of their time on the phone with stringers and sources. They don’t personally investigate every incident in the field. It just isn’t physically possible if they’re required to write every day about what happens in a country the size of California, especially when it can take literally days to travel from one part of Baghdad to another.
I’m sure media companies are careful about who they hire, but it’s hard to make the right call every time in a bewildering and inscrutable place like Iraq. Terrorists and insurgents are and have been supported by a substantial percentage of the local population. It’s nearly impossible to build a firewall thick enough to keep them all out.
“Read the rest in COMMENTARY Magazine”:http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/The-Case-of-Bilal-Hussein-11353.