McClatchy
Austin Tice "has been incommunicado for more than a week, his whereabouts unknown since exchanging email with a colleague," Hannah Allam reports. Tice had been in Syria reporting for McClatchy, The Washington Post, CBS News, Al Jazeera English and other organizations, Allam writes.
Tice was due to leave Damascus for Lebanon after Aug. 11; the trip "often takes days because of the fighting en route," Allam writes. "The Damascus suburb where he was last known to have been has faced heavy bombardment in recent days that has made communications difficult."
McClatchy says it's working with other news organizations and the U.S. State Department to find Tice. Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told Allam he's “focused intensively” on getting Tice home.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Hannah Allam's name.
In an interview with Storyboard, Lowy says he's gravitated to his iPhone rather than a sophisticated DSLR in part because it's more efficient and inconspicuous. "I think it engenders a greater sense of intimacy with subjects because you’re not putting a big camera in their face."
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Politico | Gawker
A cousin of the late New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid is claiming that Shadid was unhappy with the arrangements for his trip to Syria, and that Shadid told his wife that if he died on the trip, it would be the Times' fault. Politico's Dylan Byers initially reported what Ed Shadid said in a speech Saturday night to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Gawker's John Cook got more details in an interview. The video of the speech has also been posted online.
According to Ed Shadid, a security advisor for the Times "forbade" Shadid from entering Syria in December because it was too dangerous. A few months later, after CNN had gained access to a rebel stronghold, Shadid's editors told him to go, Ed Shadid said. The night before he was to leave, "the plans started to fall apart," and he got into an argument with his editors, according to his cousin.
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Los Angeles Times via Jim Roberts
The Los Angeles Times published graphic photos in print and online this morning of U.S. soldiers posing with Afghan corpses.
Eighteen such photos were provided by an anonymous soldier in the 82nd Airborne Division, David Zucchino reports, though only two images were published. Both appear with the story online, and the same two appear in print, Zucchino told me, one of them on today's front page (see below). The soldier who provided the images served in Afghanistan and "said the photos point to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops."
Pentagon officials say the images are over two years old; the paper reports they are from a yearlong deployment of the 4th Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Bragg, N.C., "which lost 35 men during that time, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks casualties. At least 23 were killed by homemade bombs or suicide bombers."
U.S. military officials asked the Times not to publish the photos, but they did.
Times Editor Davan Maharaj said, "After careful consideration, we decided that publishing a small but representative selection of the photos would fulfill our obligation to readers to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan, including the allegation that the images reflect a breakdown in unit discipline that was endangering U.S. troops."
War reporters and photographers from The New York Times and the Associated Press talked at an ASNE 2012 conference panel Monday about the dangers of working in war zones.
Moderator Susan Bennett posed questions to (left-to-right) C.J. Chivers, Rodrigo Abd and Tyler Hicks.
In one lengthy exchange, Times correspondent C.J. Chivers described his predicament as a journalist who had also served as a Marine infantry officer during the Gulf War. His military experience sometimes leads him to disagree with the tactics of the unit he is embedded with.
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Associated Press | BBC News | The Independent
The news industry must figure out how to take better care of its journalists, said Ed Shadid at a memorial service for his cousin, New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid. That includes making sure they have proper medical equipment; Shadid died of an apparent asthma attack brought on by horses as he was reporting in Syria.
I would ask that they consider that the danger for journalists like Anthony and others like him is that their commitment and their history of bravery could be exploited by editors and management who are under their own pressures to meet production goals and achieve awards.
This weekend, the Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy, injured in the attack which killed Marie Colvin, paid tribute to her by describing her as one of the "greatest observers" of her time.
This seems to me to sum up why it is important that news organisations that are trusted by the public and do not have a political agenda should continue to try to put their reporters on the ground. ... (more...)
CNN Ivan Watson narrates as he and a crew of CNN journalists clamber across rocks as they leave Syria. "I’ve had some tough assignments," says CNN photographer Joe Duran. "I’d say this is the most difficult one for many reasons. … It’s been not just scary, but emotional. Some of the people we left behind, I just hate to think what might happen to them." Also on CNN: A gripping, long report by a French photographer the network is calling Mani, showing Homs at war. One little girl holds up a photo of her Uncle Salah. "He was filming the demonstrations," she replies, when asked how he died. || Related: Poland's diplomats try to get two wounded journalists out of Homs, along with bodies of Remi Ochlik and Marie Colvin (Associated Press) | Activists, including citizen journalists, in Homs "are prepared to die in the battle for a free and democratic Syria." (Channel 4 News)
The Washington Post | Poynter
Stars and Stripes is moving from the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., to Fort Meade. The relocation to a godforsaken Maryland suburb, ordered by the Pentagon, "would place the newspaper in the same facility as one of the military’s main public-affairs operations," Paul Farhi writes.
“It creates the perception of a lack of independence, that we are doing the bidding of the Pentagon, so to speak,” said Terry Leonard, Stars and Stripes’ top editor. “That’s a huge problem. . . . It’s a step-by-step process. How long will it take before we get absorbed into the great [public affairs] monstrosity that the DoD has?”
Craig Silverman called Mark Prendergast's recent exit from the paper "one of the most acrimonious departures of an ombudsman in recent memory, if not of all time." Prendergast's fiery farewell column last month asserted the paper's "standing as an independent source of news is threatened by a wrongheaded government response to the WikiLeaks disclosures that raises the specter of censorship." (Interesting: Last week, Bill Keller opined that "the most palpable legacy of the WikiLeaks campaign for transparency is that the U.S. government is more secretive than ever.") Prendergast also objected that the search committee replacing him lacked a representative from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Newsday
Rosemarie Colvin says her daughter Marie was planning to leave Syria Tuesday but stayed to finish a story she was working on.
"She had a story she felt was very important," Rosemarie Colvin said, adding: "She would take one more day." ...
"She was absolutely dedicated to doing what she did at the highest level ... It's the way she always was. Even when she was young she marched to her own tune ... She was totally dedicated to getting the story straight and getting it out."
Colvin, who died overnight in Syria while reporting for The Sunday Times, graduated from Long Island's Oyster Bay High School and attended Yale.
