Posted Sept. 4, 2014
The second beheading of an American journalist by ISIS in two weeks may indicate that the Sunni militant group is targeting journalists in a particularly brutal form to show the world – and particularly President Barack Obama – its strength and influence, according to several experts.
“We’ve seen this before by drug cartels in Mexico, and now by ISIS in Syria and northern Iraq,” said Frank Smyth, executive director of Global Journalist Security, a firm that trains journalists to operate in hostile environments. “Journalists in such environments should no longer expect that their role as independent observers will be respected.”
In a video released Tuesday, Steven Sotloff, 31, was shown being beheaded by a member of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The White House said intelligence officials believe the video to be authentic.
On Aug. 19, ISIS released a video showing the beheading of James Foley, another American journalist freelancing for GlobalPost.com. Sotloff also was a freelancer who had written for Time magazine and Foreign Policy. In both videos, the journalists were kneeling, dressed in orange jumpsuits and being guarded by a black-clad and masked ISIS fighter wielding a knife.
“Journalists — every professional operating in violent environments — need to know that neither their roles nor their nationalities will protect them,” Smyth said. “On the contrary, the two back-to-back beheadings by ISIS of James Foley and Steven Sotloff suggest that journalists are being targeted because of their nationality, while their executions are being used to amplify ISIS’ message of terror around the globe.”
However, Phil Balboni, president of GlobalPost, said the murders of journalists may be more the result of the kind of conflicts occurring today in Syria and elsewhere – where journalists have to operate without protection of the U.S. military or local authorities.
“It’s the nature of the conflict that can lead to journalists being one of the few good targets of opportunity,” he said.
Delphine Hagland, the U.S. director of Reporters Without Borders, said the killing of journalists is now part of ISIS’ information war.
“The fact that they are targeting information providers is not new,” she said. “Many Syrian journalists have been threatened or killed if they didn’t follow” ISIS’ propaganda talking points when they wrote articles.
“There now is clearly a new level of violence toward foreign journalists and American journalists,” Hagland said.
Reporters Without Borders estimates that 40 professional journalists – 13 foreign and 27 Syrian – have been killed since March 2011.
Smyth said security training for journalists and others, including humanitarians operating in the same areas, must emphasize avoidance skills and situational awareness at least as much as how to navigate contingencies like hostile mobs or armed combat.
“Staying safe is very hard to do,” he said. “Journalists must be plugged in to various possible sources of information, and update it constantly. Journalists must also give themselves a wider margin of error than they might do in other circumstances.”
Hagland agreed that the situation in Syria has become more dangerous for journalists and as a consequence, “Syria is disappearing for news maps.”
“Who can still report on what is happening?” she asked, noting, “News coverage itself is a victim of the war.”
Ellen Shearer is co-director of the National Security Journalism Initiative, as well as the William F. Thomas Professor of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. She teaches in the school’s Washington Program. Before joining the Medill faculty, she was a senior editor at New York Newsday, a consulting editor at Newhouse News Service, marketing executive at Reuters, and held positions as senior executive, bureau chief and reporter at United Press International.
