The flap over Associated Press photographer
Bilal Hussein, a Fallujah native who has been detained without charges in Iraq for 19 months, highlights a thorny subject for newsrooms trying to staff bureaus in foreign lands. Hiring a local journalist often gets a Western news agency better access to a community, to real people and to the authentic story. Managing an employee across language and cultural differences, in a time of war, has got to be a challenge. And parachuting an American journalist into a community that is already wary of Westerners has its own shortcomings.
The U.S. military and the Iraqi government
describe Hussein as a terrorist who infiltrated the AP. His bosses at AP
describe him as a well-sourced photographer who knew how to get around his hometown better than anyone. Whatever the truth, it's safe to say Hussein had a talent for placing himself in the right location to get a dramatic photo -- the kind of photo that no other photographers in Iraq were able to get.
It's up to the Iraqi court system to sort it all out.
Meanwhile, bureau chiefs supervising local and Western staffs walk a constant tightrope. Bringing in journalists from the States is costly. Even when they are not in a war zone, Western journalists must hire local guides, often journalists themselves, which is one of the first assignments Hussein had with AP. Employing the local journalist to do journalism, rather than drive around American colleagues, makes sense. But it leaves the news organization vulnerable to
criticism like the AP is now experiencing.
It's a lot easier to protect an American journalist from incarceration. If Hussein were American, or British or German, his country would demand his release. As an Iraqi citizen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer is at the mercy of his country's courts.
Are there any press protections in the provisional government of Iraq? ... before I wrote this. Perhaps 10,000 would have been...
