[LINK] Journalists are soft targets

[rfmcdonald]

From the Financial Times:

Qataris, including senior officials, reacted with shock on Wednesday to newspaper reports in Britain suggesting that George W Bush, the US president, had discussed bombing the Doha headquarters of the Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera.

The report, in Tuesday’s edition of the British Daily Mirror, was based on what the newspaper reported were leaked minutes of a conversation between Mr Bush and Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, on April 16 2004.

[. . .]

On Wednesday the International Federation of Journalists said reports of a plan to attack al-Jazeera raised concerns that the US attack on the station’s Baghdad office in April 2003, in which a reporter was killed, was deliberate targeting of the media.

“It is time for the United States to tell the truth about this attack and to take responsibility for its actions, which appear to be [a] gross violation of international humanitarian law,” said Aidan White, general secretary of the IFJ.

The IFJ said it supported full disclosure of the alleged Blair-Bush conversation and a reopening of the investigation into the 2003 bombing of the al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad.

Moataz Abu Samra a journalist with the Al Sharq newspaper in Qatar, said Qatari public opinion was repelled by the reports.