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CNN Live Saturday
Interview With Kavita Menon
Aired July 13, 2002 - 12:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Perhaps now you're convinced why journalism is one of the most dangerous professions. Joining me to discuss the deadly attacks on journalists is Kavita Menon of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She is joining us from New York.
Thanks very much for joining us, Kavita.
KAVITA MENON, COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS: Thanks for having me.
WHITFIELD: Well, here are the numbers. About 16 percent of those foreign journalists die in crossfire, and 77 percent are murdered. Most people perhaps don't realize that these reporters are hunted out for doing the job that their hearts, you know, have them doing.
MENON: Yeah. Most of the time the world pays attention to stories when journalists are killed in the crossfire or killed in a war zone in places that are very obviously dangerous places to be. What the Committee to Protect Journalists focuses on, though, is all journalists who are killed in the line of duty, and those tend to be local journalists in countries where just there has been a complete breakdown in law and order. Generally, countries like the Philippines or Bangladesh, where it can be very dangerous just to do your job covering crime.
WHITFIELD: And they're hunted -- and they're hunted that you've discovered in your research -- they are mostly hunted because they're uncovering the truths or uncovering corruption in particularly hostile regions.
MENON: Right, but they don't necessarily have to be regions that the world considers hostile. They can be places where you're reporting on a corrupt politician or drug lords or any kind of injustice. I mean, any reporter in these countries who are reporting on such crimes is vulnerable. You don't have to be in what's known as a war zone to be vulnerable to attack.
WHITFIELD: And perhaps the danger most recently became so underscored most recently during the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. Everyone remembers hearing about the graphic details of a group of journalists who were robbed and assassinated by bandits.
MENON: Right. There were a group of four journalists who were part of a convoy traveling from Jalalabad to Kabul, and they were ambushed, actually, by a group of gunmen. It's still not clear if they were Taliban or al Qaeda, or just bandits. But these journalists were dragged out of their cars and shot.
And those journalists got a lot of international attention. One of them, an Italian journalist, Maria Grazia Cutuli, actually became something of a national hero. Italy's president spoke in honor of her. The Italian government has been very aggressive in making sure that her killers are found and prosecuted.
What we would like to see is for that to happen in the cases of all journalists who are targeted.
WHITFIELD: And are you finding that in the case of so many journalists who were killed not necessarily because they were particularly hunted out as retaliation for a story that they did, that perhaps they're easy targets because they're often carrying cash with them in order to travel more freely. Whether it's, you know, border to border or within a country. Credit cards are just not feasible, you know, as most foreign journalists discover.
MENON: That was certainly the case in Afghanistan, that journalists were more vulnerable because they were carrying expensive equipment, because they carried a lot of cash on them. So they were targets not just for political reasons or because they were investigating a sensitive story; they were also targets just because they had a lot of valuable stuff.
WHITFIELD: All right. Kavita Menon, thank you very much for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Thanks for joining us from New York.
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