Journalism: An increasingly dangerous craft
When I was in Washington earlier this year, I visited the “Newseum,” a seven-level, 23,000 square-metre museum featuring 15 theaters and 15 galleries about the history of the media.
One of the most dramatic exhibits is its Journalists Memorial, which pays tribute to reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the news.
The gallery features photographs of hundreds of the journalists whose names are etched on the memorial’s glass panels of the soaring, two-story structure, as well as kiosks where information on every journalist on the memorial can be accessed.
Each year, the Newseum selects a representative group of journalists who lost their lives on the job in the preceding year. Their names are added to the memorial to illustrate the dangers faced by journalists around the world.
On June 4, the names of 18 journalists were added to the memorial to represent all those who died in pursuit of the news in 2017, bringing the total to 2,323, dating back to 1837.
“All the journalists recognized on this memorial this year faced unprecedented dangers as they worked to report the news, often in countries where press freedom is imperiled or nonexistent,” said Cathy Trost, executive director of the Freedom Forum Institute.
This month, a well-known Saudi Arabian journalist appears to have been murdered.
Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2 to get paperwork to get married, but never came out.
He has not been heard from since, with Turkish authorities announcing they think he has been killed.
“We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate,” a Turkish official told the Reuters news agency.
They think a 15-person Saudi team flew to Turkey, killed Khashoggi, and brought with them a bone saw to dismember him.
The Saudi consul in Istanbul, Mohammed al-Otaibi, rejected the accusation, asserting that “the citizen, Jamal Khashoggi, is not in the consulate or in Saudi Arabia.”
A regular Washington Post contributor, the Saudi journalist was known for criticizing the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in columns for the American newspaper.
In “The Silencing of Jamal Khashoggi,” published Oct. 3 by Karen Attiah, the paper’s Global Opinions editor wrote that “we are extremely disturbed to have had no contact from Jamal since he was last seen visiting a Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday. At the time of this writing, we have not been able to reach him.
“We have inquired about Jamal’s whereabouts, and expressed our deep concern, to both Turkish and Saudi officials.”
The Post also put out a blank column in its Oct. 5 edition after his disappearance.
The empty column was titled “A Missing Voice” and carried Khashoggi’s byline.
Jamal Khashoggi has had a career spanning three decades.
Born in Medina in 1958, he studied journalism at Indiana University and began his career as a correspondent for the English language Saudi Gazette newspaper.
Khashoggi is best known for coverage of the events of Afghanistan, Algeria, Kuwait and the Middle East in the 1990s.
In recent years his position became more precarious. In December 2016, Saudi authorities banned Khashoggi from writing in newspapers, appearing on TV and attending conferences.
This came after Khashoggi’s remarks made at a Washington think-tank the previous month, where he was critical of Donald Trump’s ascension to the U.S. presidency.
Khashoggi turned against the Saudi government after deciding that achieving democracy “from the inside” was not possible, according to Yahia Assiri, a former Saudi air force officer living in exile who met with Khashoggi in London late last year.
There’s a very good chance he will join the other murdered reporters on the “Newseum” memorial wall next year.