Preposterous

THE Defence Department earlier this year released a comprehensive manual outlining its interpretation of the law of war. The 1 176-page document, the first of its kind, includes guidelines for the treatment of journalists covering armed conflicts that can only make their work more dangerous, cumbersome and subject to censorship. They should be repealed immediately.

Journalists, the manual says, are generally regarded as civilians, but may in some instances be deemed “unprivileged belligerents”, a legal term that applies to fighters who are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war. In some instances, the document says, “the relaying of information (such as providing information of immediate use in combat operations) could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities”.

The manual warns that “reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying”, so it calls on journalists to “act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities”. It says that governments “may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy”.

Allowing this document to stand as guidance for commanders, lawyers and officials of other nations would do severe damage to press freedoms.

One senior Pentagon official, who was asked to explain when a journalist might be deemed an “unprivileged belligerent”, pointed to the assassination of the Afghan military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud in September 2001. That example is preposterous because Mr Massoud was killed by assassins posing as television journalists who hid explosives in a camera. They were not journalists.

The White House should call on Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to revise this section, which so clearly runs contrary to American law and principles.