Lets salute the journalists in Iraq

Yesterday I blogged about an article by an Iraqi journalist on the need for a continued presence of the media in the war-torn country.

Today, another similar article appeared in The Times, by its diplomatic editor Richard Beeston, who said that journalists in Iraq regularly work under tremendous pressure of inconvenient working conditions as well as casual life-threatening violence.

He asks: “Why would any sane person want to be a journalist in Baghdad today? The work is dangerous, the conditions are unpleasant and the job often frustrating and unglamorous.”

And his answer?

“Most of those correspondents who still volunteer to work there do so because it is the most important news story in the world today.”

So let us all salute the horde of journalists – Iraqis and others – for their untiring work so that the rest of us can fill the huge gaps in our knowledge.

Read Beeston’s full article – The dead and the deadlines – here.