you're watching largely thanks for shooting in here's a recap of the headlines syrian rebels are thought to be getting heavy weapons through turkey which is one of their present ourselves days in colorado unnumbered . concern that we didn't see a few more over to judy in our son's case and just solving the sex crimes complaint as it refuses and investing in taishan to question him in london. and the arab israelis are no don't exempt from military service are risking a call up to fight against people obama india and labeled a traitor. mongering stories in just thirty minutes and now our stories are from

the war in iraq and how this conflict became the bloodiest ever for those armed only with cameras and microphones.

i got him on my side. if. i didn't agree. with. the two thousand and three war in iraq was the bloodiest of the last decades almost one million soldiers and civilians were killed and four and a half million iraqis became refugees. a war trying thousands of journalists and media personnel complete load with. a war that was broadcast live the room to blur the complexity in the first time to instantly and insist the put me.

after eighteen days of war u.s. forces into baghdad without encountering any particular resistance more than one hundred journalists and media workers covering the war from the iraqi capital are staying at palestine hotel. the whole world had the feeling that the day would be an important day a critical day for the war in iraq. the marines and the u.s. army were so close to the hotel we could almost see their eyes so hoarse. and many on here and around the time i went out on the balcony it was a very calm down shots were being had from a long distance away and that's why i was on that balcony because i realized i

wasn't in any danger by being there on that balcony looking over the city so that you know. algebra good bridge just four hundred meters away from the hotel to american tanks and taken back a position since the. sergeant sean gibson scans with his binoculars the floors of the hotel. he focuses on the fifteenth floor always spot someone moving. a reuters cameraman is filming from his rooms balcony the entrance of the u.s. army in baghdad. during that time i was receive a mortar rounds try to make the bridge collapse so when i'm sitting down here and i got all these fires coming from all directions i don't think it could tell me is that hey somebody is looking for somebody else and then when i seen the individual

standing up all about the name what a pair of binoculars. and they was talking and he was pointing. i did not immediately engage that individual i did not do that i called it up and told him what i've seen. and it took about ten minutes later for them to call back as a. firearm and that's what i did. every moment of the moment of the attack at deafening sound is that. we don't in sort of this are though i can't hear anything or hear the hall i feel is in internally slang a parable so. it didn't get. let's fill in the last two a super powerful thing that i felt like i was breaking inside. looking at my first thought was that i had some sort of internal bleeding or came a couple grafter about ten seconds i saw the smoke rising from the upper floors of the palestine hotel going at that moment i realized that the hotel had been hit.

also damaged the floor below where spanish cameraman was sicko's off had been filming immediately off the blas his friend and colleague john sees the aga rushes to help. you get that whistling noise in your ears after an explosion occurs nearby believes you somehow disoriented at the beginning to sort of invalidated see below. and then i heard the terrible screams of my driver shouting. and he said to me john john come quickly it's jose. i had to act fast. so i hit the floor and crawled along the road to standing among broken glass and debris to reach him something that i. live.

confusion and panic spreads on the floor with the ukrainian born cameraman was still. a little. people as soon as i heard crying i grabbed my camera and friends back to the corner jewelry. even though they were people bleeding outside the elevators. and this were helping them to get in and go quickly downstairs. and we were the first ones to get into the room and what we witnessed was total

chaos with the wounded colleagues everywhere you know that either specifically i remember the whole past well a producer thought i was lying on the floor in a pool of blood asking for help. or hurt me. you know you're ok if you're here you're ok just get real ok and then there was terrorist prods joke the camera model what about for that he was unlucky enough to be on the balcony about moments filming with his camera. he was bleeding all over he was barely breathing similar. to this one i was shocked when i saw him. and i thought that he situation was critical of. the explosion kills. and severely wounds plus he called us.

because the little took my belt from my trousers and tied it around his wounds to try and stop the bleeding. i was with them all the time and they remember whispering as we caused the hotel lobby of. course to read about jose i'll cover your face you will feel like being suffocated you'll feel like you will think that you can't breathe but outside there are many television cameras doing what you and i would do if we were up there filming and. the moment when people kept filming i saw a group of men carrying a wanted man wrapped in a white sheet he was in pretty bad shape there was a lot of blood. they were carrying him to a car i remember as eyes because when i reached the window of the car i remember them looking at me as if they were asking me something or who did it but i was like

why are you filming me what the hell is happening to me. but one bundle. going to me. when we arrived at the hospital we faced down to ask situation. less than. cars and taxis were coming from every direction carrying wounded people's families with women and children with men who were injured as a result of the bombings you know the doctors had to decide to whom they should give priority to who could be saved and who could be not going to. suffer if i was having breakfast in my kitchen still in my pajamas. when i heard on the radio attack on the hotel palestine i began.

as a moment at that moment my feet started tremblin and it was a shock to fulfill. what i'm told us in the beginning break told us that he might lose his leg and i was thinking i don't mind as long as he returns. up and i was horrified at the thought that he would come back amputated i was thinking how will he do his job as a cameraman that his professional career was finished. at the gate who suck at how stupid it. would be for the tragic thing is he survived the surgery. covered with bandages and under heavy sedation. you know i was the c.e.o. they let us go into his room so we could be with him a little bit more system for nearly you have a. video about like in the movies there's the subtle machine that shows the

condition of the heart. you need to believe the rest of the support i thought. started vibrating and beeping. and that line started to decline i think is that i see it with us that go with us but i know. we immediately called the doctors because they came and started massacring as hard as the worst novel so much ok got it they put him on life support and so forth. if it are we shot a turned out and i don't know if he could hear us we were trying to get to a subconscious i want to be brave until a little machine stopped working like me. but the beeping kept getting fainter and fainter until in the end it was all over. the second.

i could never imagine that this tragedy could happen to me i could never have imagined it. they miss purpose of your phrase when you know your son is in a war zone. but you never think that they'll bring him back to you in a coffin and fight it all with his broken camera that i don't know. just. two cameramen two friends lost their lives doing what they love to do. especially for todd us during his whole career the showdown with death was constant . put.

more thought out a conversation we had was the us he told me the dream of every professional camera man the culmination of their career would be to film his own death you know that he had it is not there was the slip. but you know the there are people who find their profession but actually it's the profession that finds them as we see it with the poor the professor who gets up before this is what would. you do with it would have been very difficult to imagine tyrus without a camera cut off the best of being you know to put that. he calls me i pick up the phone and to hear. this mom i always cry when he calls me don't cry mom in cyprus not in baghdad there is no fighting here the journalese say here soon i'll come to see you with lyndon little downies doctors about five days later they killed him.

personally most of the world you can sleep in our profession and you don't just see the death of a human being but also a mother's grief when they bring her son's dead body tour of that. or maybe a wife who has just lost her husband. to just a beltway your knowledge dealing with only the end of a human life but also with the consequences of that and. the two men killed in the palestine hotel were not the only journalists who lost their lives from american gunfire on that day. a few hours early

a missile from an american fighter plane targets the office of al-jazeera channel in the center of baghdad. the palestinian journalist. gets killed on the spot. i see lights glowing in the sky i don't know if this is the beginning of an air raid or some random explosion is just. above we left a camera over the roof five six people were in the basement the camera was sending a live shot storage was it our building here in doha after the first rocket targeting the generator power generator and the camera was moving to keep people here also becoming i meant to come up and fix a faulty product actually volunteered to go up with a commitment to fix a fault budget that i was filming here when suddenly i heard the sound of a missile or you meant to that it was powerful you know more our thoughts all of the list goes. little i was afraid to watch t.v.

in case i saw him dead on screen after his death i could never watch anything again . it was not the first time that americans targeted al-jazeera offices they also bombed down jazeera offices in kabul back in two thousand and one according to many london newspapers the us president george bush had suggested at some point to britain's prime minister tony blair to bomb around his ears head office in qatar which is or communicated it. coordinates long to chewton latitude to victoria clarke inside the pentagon so the americans knew exactly where the fury was and the bombs that killed the al jazeera journalist later that year landed exactly at the coordinates. that al-jazeera had given the pentagon. his era the message was very

very clear stop telling the truth. that's why they were targeted in baghdad and that's why they were targeted. al-jazeera almost revolutionize the reporting of wars. and incurred great anger. in military establishments among government. some jealousy amongst their colleagues i have to say. a great deal of admiration. that's the message that was a message to them to all those the others in the palestine hotel. the people who died there it was a warning to all of us. when that tank pulled up outside the palestine hotel and fired it was a warning. you will do as we tell you to do as journalists or else.

why did journalist become a target. in order to answer this question we need to go back in time. brunel that's our mission we're about to embark on our mission today is to report down to the site of the ambush seventy miles south of here and attempt to kill the b c one two three ball with the powerful but be allowed to cronkite a distinguished t.v. reporter and presenter expresses at the time the official conception regarding the war coverage in vietnam a great way to go to war for the american media the conception that described the war as an exciting adventure gradually changed the vietnam war turned out very bad for america. and after that was it news organizations in a to some degree felt responsible. in

a pit so shaded protests you know i want to pulitzer prize for writing stories that attacked the u.s. military in the u.s. government the pictures that a.p. people took eddie adams a picture of the police executing a viet cong in the streets of saigon a nine hundred sixty eight nick but another a.p. photographer take your picture of a young girl with the clothes burned off by napalm running down a country road very negative images. u.s. media turned away from. reporting. from then on independent journalism was regarded as a collateral and a. after the terrorist attacks of september eleventh two thousand and one the bush administration took the chance to try to control the media and manipulate american public opinion. i think the bush administration absolutely manipulated.

the media in america at the time in hindsight of course their their justifications for the war were more spurious and best and it just they were they were falsehoods one of the things that was most disturbing about the nuclear issue was that. in november the inspectors went into iraq to look at whether there were weapons of mass destruction or programs. modeled darted put out reports that they were unable to find any trace and while it was not possible one hundred percent the thing that's going on it was a very very high likelihood that nothing was going. and this got very little coverage following the government's conception a large number of the american media demonize saddam hussein and discredited all those who are against the war some american sadly not interested in victory and yet

they want us to believe that their behavior is patriotic well it's not. for media organizations and it's people the war did not start with the invasion in iraq but from the very moment president bush demanded the withdrawal of all journalists from the area of operations. for their own safety off foreign nationals including journalists and inspectors should leave iraq immediately. the message was clear for all reporters and media personnel who had come to baghdad from all around the world they did not want them to move around and report freely without being monitored but what goes on in a war you know is deeply unpleasant people violate other people's rights people act in very cruel and inhumane way the last thing that military leaders want is to have independent observers of those sorts of violations and that's one of the reasons why you find the journalists were targeted. on the other hand saddam's regime gave

permission to many journalists remain in baghdad they tried to control them very tightly and at the same time they kept giving them false information even hours before the american troops set foot in the iraqi capital. we would have thought that memo good and bad that there would be added to. the war correspondents in baghdad were only the one side of the story but in that war there was another but journalists were embedded in the allied forces. what imbedded journalists could report it was in most cases predetermined severely limiting their point of view. this is if you like putting together a possible jigsaw if we had relied just on embedded journalists just to report on their one hundred meters of desert then we would have been producing an incomplete picture of you right there that going well could be embedded reporters became much more difficult due to the growing dependency they developed with the soldiers who

they were following you do get very close to them but you have to remember and i remember before i embedded the advice one journalist gave me says write in your notebook every day i am not one of them i am not one of them i am not one of them and you have to remember you're not a soldier your audience your bosses your job is different from theirs they're there to fight a war you're there to talk about that work report on that war to make sure the public that you're responsible to understands what's happening in that war there will be good things and there will be bad things will be here as i'm there will be atrocity. kevin sites was embedded with the american forces when he filmed such an atrocity in a mosque in poland. one specific marine went into

that mosque. he saw the five insurgents in there and he began shooting them. again even though they were unarmed. began shooting them initially with his m. sixteen rifle and then when his m. sixteen g.m.t. pulled out his nine millimeter beretta and got he started firing at them when. i see this marine out of course i say he's been faking he's dead he's faking he's dead. and at that point you raise m. sixteen and i raised my camera at the same time and he squeezed the trigger off and fires directly into the man's head and i remember it very specifically i've seen

a lot of people killed in coverage before in my past wars but i've never seen what i thought was next to shit i suggested to my network that maybe we don't show the video in its entirety we only show portions of it that we mitigate the impact of the video by self censoring in some ways by not showing that videotape people were completely confused about what the intentions of the marine was at that moment they basically accept that he might have been in fear for his life they had no other way to judge his actions because i didn't give them another way to me that was the ultimate betrayal of of my trust that the public in general to me to do this particular job. inside the mosque there was another man wounded kevin sites speaks with him but having in mind how he should report his story he exits the mosque two years later he discovers something that haunts him still that man that i had been

talking to had been shot twenty three times in the back. basically flipped over and you know just murdered so perhaps the more definitive murder that occurred at that mosque was not even the one. captured on videotape but the one that i walked out and there are not many journalists that can say that in the failure of doing their job they cost a man their life i can. you know and that's a powerful powerful thing.