Journalists in Danger

PBS documentary "In the Line of Fire" to re-air on June 5th



While working as a journalist in Israel, Patricia Naylor, a Canadian TV producer, met a number of Palestinian video cameramen and still photographers who cover the frequent clashes in Hebron. These journalists work for Western media companies. Cameramen Mazen Dana and Nael Shyouki of the British news agency, Reuters, and their colleagues are accustomed to the risks of photographing street protests and riots. But displaying their wounds, they all told Naylor they had become targets of Israeli soldiers firing rubber bullets and even live ammunition. The excellent Frontline documentary is being rebroadcast on 5 June 2003 on PBS

IFJ calls for journalists' rights and security to be made a priority in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue

The International Federation of Journalists today called for the rights and security of journalists to be made a priority in the forthcoming dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. “It is time to set journalists free and to build democracy through dialogue, tolerance and press freedom,” says the IFJ in a letter to both sides. 

Two Palestinian journalists beaten up by Israeli soldiers

On 20 May 2003, RSF voiced its outrage over the violent beating which two clearly identified Palestinian journalists received from Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem. The incident took place during the night of 19 to 20 May. One of the journalists sustained an injury to his right hand that will prevent him from working for some time. 

Autopsy suggests British cameraman James Miller was shot by Israeli army gunfire

On 8 May 2003, RSF called for the punishment of those responsible for the death of British freelance cameraman James Miller on 2 May. An autopsy revealed that the the only bullet to hit him entered his body from the front. The journalist was killed as he was filming troops in the Gaza Strip. 

My friend James

“Late on Friday night, I received a phone call: Reuters was reporting that a man had been shot dead in Rafah, on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. That the man was a cameraman and director called James Miller. The sense of shock and fury with which I put the phone down has still not faded: James was a man with whom I spent some of the most extraordinary times of my life, a man of talent, intelligence and integrity. A man I was plotting to go down the pub with in a few weeks’ time.” Cassian Harrison remembers her friend James in the pages of The Guardian — and joins a growing call for a complete investigation into his murder by the IDF

PCHR: "No exchange of fire took place when Israeli soldiers shot dead a British journalist"

An investigation conducted by PCHR and eyewitnesses’ testimonies prove that Israeli soldiers willfully shot dead James Miller, a British cameraman, contrary to the claims of the Israeli military southern command that Israeli soldiers returned fire coming from Palestinian sources at the time that Miller was shot. 

UK seeks probe into Israeli shooting of cameraman

Israeli forces demolishing a home suspected of concealing an arms-smuggling tunnel in the Gaza Strip shot Miller on Friday in the flashpoint Rafah refugee camp where he was making a documentary on the impact of violence on Palestinian children, witnesses said. Abdel-Rahman Abdullah, a freelance Palestinian journalist who saw the night-time incident, told Reuters the troops opened fire unprovoked despite clear press markings on the TV crew. 

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