Shooting the War

Another news photographer has been listed as MIA in Iraq. Freelance photographer Molly Bingham was last heard from in Baghdad last Saturday.

And Newsday correspondent Matthew McAllester and photographer Moises Saman are still missing.

There is a dispatch from Moises on PDN this week, and one from another friend, Vince Laforet from the NY Times who is aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

From Moises:

A couple of photographers got their cameras smashed, and one got his camera thrown out from the roof of the hotel. All the photogs that got their equipment confiscated got it back the next day. It is extremely difficult to move freely since the drivers and minders are registered with the Ministry of Information and will not take you anywhere without the ministry consent."

PDNewswire has more news about photographers from the front.

Magnum’s Luc Delahaye, Getty’s Chris Hondros and Tim Fadek of Polaris were nearly killed after taking a wrong turn 30 miles south of Baghdad. JP Pappis of Polaris says the three had left the slow-moving U.S. military convoy they had been traveling with in an attempt to catch up with a faster one ahead. After being ambushed and pelted with machine gunfire from Iraqi forces, two of their cars were disabled. Fadek and Hondros quickly leapt into a third car driven by Delahaye, and the journalists sped away with the Iraqis in pursuit. After hiding their car and fleeing across the desert on foot, they were able to use a sat phone to notify colleagues of their position. Newsweek reporter Scott Johnson, who was traveling with the photographers, was tracked down by Marines first. The others were missing for several hours, until the U.S. military rescued them the next morning. Pappis says the military planned to fly the journalists back to Kuwait City, out of harm’s way.

And I just found this Editor & Publisher piece on the dangers of being an "unembedded" journalist covering the war.