A Second Iraqi Media Worker Dies for The New York Times

The mainstream media practices its own form of apartheid in Iraq

By David Paulin

It’s an Iraq story that reporters ought to fall over themselves to cover: Iraqis employed by U.S. companies are being sacrificed for the sake of corporate profits. You might call it a sort of corporate apartheid. But you won’t find the Bush administration or Halliburton in this scandal. The culprits are America’s most illustrious media giants – The New York Times, Associated Press, and a number of others. At issue is their practice of “hotel journalism.”

American journalists for much of the war have stayed holed up in hotels and well-guarded homes in the Green Zone. Most write their stories and do phone interviews there. And they communicate with Iraqis whom their companies employ as reporters, translators, and photographers.

Hastily trained, most of these Iraqis lack the professional backgrounds that even a small-town weekly paper in the U.S. would demand. Yet they are shaping our view of the war. These Iraqis, moreover, are dying in large numbers; yet they earn local wages and benefits; and though their compensation is high by local standards, it’s still Third World.

There’s a curious irony here. Liberal papers like The New York Times rail against the economic injustices of outsourcing; yet they demonstrate no such anger over their own employment practices.

Some Iraqi media workers, to be sure, have demonstrated courage and a commitment to a democratic Iraq, and it appears that Hassan was one of them. But others appear to have questionable loyalties or understanding of what constitutes good journalism. One Iraqi AP photographer, Bilal Hussein, is even being held by U.S. military authorities for allegedly having improper ties to terrorists. Oddly, some Iraqi photographers have an uncanny ability to arrive, unimpeded, to cover unfolding terrorist activity or the downing of aircraft. The AP has has vigorously defended Hussein.

Whether exceptional, mediocre, are despicable, all Iraqi media workers have one thing in common. They grew up in a brutal Stalinist dictatorship – one simmering with social tensions and devoid of intellectual freedom and a responsible press.

'Hotel Journalism’

The blogesphere has registered the harshest criticism of “hotel journalism.” But earlier this month, The Times addressed the issue in some unusually frank and circumspect articles regarding the death of one of its media workers. He was the second murder victim in ten months.

Khalid W. Hassan, 23, gave his life on July 13 for the Gray Lady. A Palestinian Sunni, Hassan was driving to work when he was shot to death under circumstances that The Times said were unclear. The well-liked Iraqi interpreter and translator started with the newspaper of record when he was just 19 years old. And on Sept. 19, 2005 a highly respected Iraqi stringer, Fakher Haider, 38, was kidnapped and murdered in the port city of Basra under mysterious circumstances.

The two are among at least 129 Iraqi journalists and media workers who have been murdered or killed in hostilities since the U.S.-led invasion three years ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In contrast, only two American journalists have died.

Paying tribute to Hassan, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said Hassan comprised a “large, sometimes unsung” group of media workers who “take enormous risks every day. Without them, Americans’ understanding of what is happening on the ground in Iraq would be much, much poorer.” In a 670-word statement on a Times blog, Baghdad bureau chief John F. Burns tiptoed around the issue of exactly how his paper uses its Iraqi employees. An excerpt:

“Our Iraqi reporters — who do double duty as interpreters when they accompany New York-based correspondents and photographers on assignments — are the bedrock of our enterprise.

“This is not to confirm what some of the more scathing critics of the American media’s performance in Iraq have alleged, which is that American reporters in Baghdad practice a form of “hotel journalism” — meaning that for most of what we write we rely on the reporting of Iraqi staff members who venture beyond our well-guarded compounds, and rarely do so ourselves. There is hardly ever a day when one or more of our American reporters is not out in the city, or on embeds in Baghdad and beyond with American and Iraqi troops, and the results can be measured, on any day, by the authenticity of the reports that appear in the paper.

“But it would be foolish to deny that there are occasions when a sensible calibration of risk deters us from going out on assignment ourselves. Often, those judgments apply in equal measure to our Iraqi reporters, too. But there are other times when an Iraqi, blending into the environment in ways that no foreigner can, feels safe in taking on an assignment that we judge to be too hazardous to undertake ourselves. Our principle is that any Iraqi leaving our compound on assignment — whether reporter, driver or guard — does so only as a “willing partner,” and after a thorough security review of the assignment beforehand."

Burns is one of the most well respected Western journalists in Iraq. But his comments must be considered within the context of who is dying for America’s Fourth Estate. It’s certainly not Americans. Of the two who died, only one was a staff writer – Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly. He died at the start of the war when his Humvee careened off a road after coming under enemy fire. The other was Steven Vincent, a freelancer who was kidnapped and murdered in Basra one year ago.

Dying in Large Numbers

In all, at least 152 journalists and media workers have died: 109 were murdered and 43 killed due to hostilities, according to CPJ. Sixty-four (42 percent) worked for international news organizations – including The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, and McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder). Iraqis comprised 90 of those whom the CPJ classified as “journalists.”

Some American reporters, to be sure, have faced perilous situations. Following some close calls, Times reporter Dexter Filkins even packed a sidearm for a while, much to the consternation of Baghdad’s upright bureau chief at the time, Susan Sachs.

Burns’ comments to the contrary, the blood Iraqis are spilling for The Times and other news outlets underscores the apartheid-like nature of the mainstream media’s war coverage. AP Managing Editor Mike Silverman summed up things two years ago, telling The Times: “The main obstacle we face is the severe limitation on our movement and our ability to get out and report. It’s very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel.”

That’s how Knight Ridder (now McClautchy) has operated too, said its Baghdad bureau chief two years ago. “We’re still spending a lot of time inside the hotel,” noted 25-year-old Hannah Allam, now based in Cairo. “Even if we do go out, we don’t stay in any one place more than 20 minutes; and then we go back to the hotel. But we’re doing a lot of phone interviews. We’re sending our Iraqi staff members out a lot more, to gather information and to conduct interviews.”

Months later, Allam made a splash with a controversial memo addressed to Knight Ridder editors that was widely circulated on the Internet. She attacked a columnist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press – the Knight Ridder paper she worked at not long before Baghdad – who had dared to criticize Knight Ridder’s reporting as being overly negative.

'Outsourcing' the News

The heavy use of non-staff personnel in Iraq is part of a trend in the news business dating to the 1980s. Since then, print and television organizations have increasingly adopted corporate America’s outsourcing model: They’ve closed dozens of foreign bureaus. And to maintain foreign coverage and appearances, they’ve relied on increasing numbers of freelancers, “contract reporters,” and people they hire locally. But while outsourcing may work for corporate America, it’s a miserable model for foreign news gathering.

In Iraq, the system of journalistic apartheid encourages distorted reporting for a number of reasons. Like freelance journalists and temporary media workers everywhere, Iraqi’s media personnel have no real job security. They’re either hired on a temporary basis or work as freelancers, meaning they’re paid for each assignment or story or photograph.They essentially chase a paycheck with every assignment. As a result, they have a built-in incentive to cheat. This may involve hyping a story or photograph to ensure they’re used – and to ensure their services remain in demand.

Cheats have an advantage when working abroad: They face little accountability. Who is going to complain when a story gets a few facts screwed up? And to whom would they complain? A weekly paper in the U.S. is apt to get a complaint for something as minor as a misspelled name.

In the chaos of Iraq, reporters can fabricate quotes, slant coverage, or hype stories – and they’ll probably get away with it. Biased editors tend not to question articles, quotes, and photos that confirm their biases. And well-meaning though inexperienced freelancers and temporary media workers are unlikely to assert themselves in a dispute with an editor. They must think about their next paycheck.

"There's a dramatic relationship between changes in the industry and use of freelancers. It's something that a lot of people are very worried about," observed Josh Friedman, director of the Columbia journalism school’s international program. "If you complain, employers will just drop you and get somebody else."

Friedman was quoted in a recent article about Jill Carroll, the American freelancer who was kidnapped in Baghdad while on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor. The fascinating piece in Radar, an online magazine, echoed the first two posts published by this website, more than one year ago.

Fortunately, some counterbalance has been provided by well-informed bloggers who are scrutinizing the media’s war coverage. Without them, public opinion against the war would probably be even lower that it has been, noted author James Q. Wilson.

High-Risk Job

Of course, the most brutal aspect of Iraq’s journalistic apartheid is that Iraqi media workers are more likely to die than their American counterparts, who have well-paying staff positions and good benefits. There are systemic reasons for this. For one thing, freelancers and temporary workers are compromised due, once again, to a lack of job security and professional standing. They can’t easily turn down too many assignments, especially if other media workers are willing to do them. Obviously, they’ll risk getting replaced. And if they're replaced, it’s unlikely they’ll have the right to appeal the decision to a U.S.-based personnel manager.

The news business is competitive, and news managers are expected to produce. When I had a stint as a wire service reporter in the Caribbean, my bureau chief and news editor suggested that their photographer in Jamaica was a coward. They talked of getting rid of him, complaining he was reluctant to charge into dangerous flare-ups of civil unrest, when armed gangs were shooting it out.

The photographer, a Jamaican father with children, was paid for individual assignments and photos. As a black Jamaican, he could easily be mistaken for a combatant, as opposed to an impartial photojournalist. The editors, single women tenaciously wedded to their careers, nevertheless fretted over the photos they were missing. I knew the photographer, and they were wrong about him. It didn’t matter. The editors had one concern – results.

Interestingly, the photographer was not issued a bullet-proof vest, even though I, as a Jamaica-based contract correspondent, got one. When I pointed this out to the photographer, he laughed nervously.

What kinds of pressures are being put on freelancers and media workers in Iraqi and other high-risk areas? And what responsibilities do media companies have toward them?

“The relationship is informal contract labor,” pointed out McClatchy’s managing editor for international coverage, Mark Seibel. “How far should an international news organization go to help them? There is probably a need to review and go over polices.”

Seibel has lots of experience with informal labor. As a Miami Herald senior editor in the late 1990s, he oversaw the paper’s international edition: Its masthead listed me as its “Caracas correspondent.” A non-staff position, it paid a few hundred dollars per article. It could be a tough way to make a living. Jill Carroll would attest to that. In a colorful piece in American Journalism Review, she described her hardscrabble freelancing days in Baghdad.

Hassan apparently had money problems of his own, despite his prestigious job with The Times. One Times editor said he “spent most of his salary on rent for a cramped apartment for him, his mother and his siblings.” Fortunately, The Times set up a fund for Hassan’s family, noted The Times blog. People wishing to contribute were advised to “please send an email to foreign@nytimes.com with ‘fund for Khalid Hassan’s family’ in the subject line.”

Beyond problems arising from its system of journalistic apartheid, news outlets distort reality by adopting a morally neutral worldview, part of today’s journalistic conceit promulgated by media elites. Speaking years ago at a Columbia University seminar broadcast by PBS, veteran CBS newsman Mike Wallace famously declared that American war correspondents were neutral observers and thus had no obligation to warn U.S. troops of an impending ambush. “No, you don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter,” he declared. The ethical thing to do, as a journalist, would be to film the slaughter. And when criticizing the U.S. military’s detention of Bilal Hussein, the AP photographer, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said: “There’s no way to cover an insurgency without having contact with insurgents.”

Steven Vincent, the murdered freelancer, wrote eloquently of how such moral neutrality and equivalency was distorting our picture of Iraq. He preferred words such as “paramilitaries” and "death squads" instead of “insurgents” to define the enemy.

'If it Bleeds, It Leads'

And then there’s the problematic way in which news is defined and presented. Conflict is stressed above all else: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Most Americans get their Iraq news from the AP, and the opening paragraphs of its stories – those which command the most attention – invariably stress the most recent suicide bombing. It’s part of a standard “hard news” formula in which conflict is hyped to the limit. But it’s not a good way to cover a war.

After all, you could write nearly every story the same way out of Venezuela, which has a population of about 27 million people, about the same as Iraq’s. Like Iraq, Venezuela is a chaotic and violent place with reported murders having doubled during eight years of Hugo Chavez. There were 12,557 last year. That’s more than 34 ever day – the equivalent of about one suicide bombing every day in Iraq.

Imagine the kind of stories you’d see out of Venezuela if it were covered like Iraq. Here’s an example:

Venezuela’s Chavez opens food market amid mounting violence, deaths

By The Associated Press
CARACAS – President Hugo Chavez, flanked by Cindy Sheehan and Danny Glover, opened a new government-subsidized food market today amid mounting violence across the country.

Over the last three days, there were more than 150 murders across the South American nation, with most taking place in the grimy hillside slums where Chavez’s support is the strongest.

Chavez drew smiles from Sheehan and Glover when he said President George Bush could “learn a thing or two about eliminating poverty and creating jobs” with the subsidized market.

Meanwhile, much of Caracas was without water due to city-wide outage, the third in as many weeks. Electricity outages occurred in parts of the city, too. These problems have plagued the city, Venezuela’s capital, for years.

Chavez’s critics blame the runaway murder rate on government mismanagement and official corruption, which they contend has led to increased poverty and deteriorating basic services, despite record-high oil profits. But Chavez blames the violence on “oligarchs” whom he says are instigating the violence.

Aside from some artistic license, there’s nothing wrong with the basic facts here; you could put them in any story. Yet in reality it’s not quite so grim in Caracas, where I used to live and still visit: Streets are choked with traffic, people crowd sidewalk cafes, and fashion-conscious women visit beauty parlors. In Iraq, similar examples of normality may be found. When she was Knight Ridder’s bureau chief, Allam said she would unwind by treating herself to a manicure at a local beauty parlor. Hassan, for his part, was recalled as a fun-loving man-about-town who enjoyed his work.

All in all, you might get better news coverage all around if you covered Iraq like Venezuela – and Venezuela like Iraq. Allam, for her part, is sure to find a beauty parlor in Caracas that would suit her.

Additional Reading:

*See Kesher Talk's coverage of a panel discussion in New York, "Fixers on the Front Lines."

Jill Carroll's kidnapping: A black eye for mainstream media's use of freelancers

Jill Carroll, the freelance journalist kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was freed today. In the coming days, the mainstream media will thoroughly examine her capture and ordeal. But one thing will be left out: its own role in her kidnapping and the murder of her translator, thanks to policies revolving around its use - and misuse - of freelancers.

By David Paulin
Austin, Texas -- Jill Carroll, the 28-year-old freelance journalist kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was attempting to make her mark in journalism by going to Iraq. She had always wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and in the months ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Carroll, who had been laid off at The Wall Street Journal, figured the Middle East was the place to go.

Carroll was released today. Her translator, Allan Enwiyah, was not as lucky. He was shot and killed when the car in which he and Carroll were riding was intercepted in broad daylight.

Carroll has yet to speak publicly. But one thing is certain: Apart from her extraordinary mettle, she appears in many ways to be a typical of the freelance foreign correspondents on which news outlets have increasingly relied in recent years; and herein are some dirty little secrets of the media industry.

Faced with plummeting advertising revenues, media organizations have slashed their staffs and operating budgets in the past couple of decades in pursuit of ever greater profits. One of the causalities have been foreign news bureaus. As a consequence, many outlets have turned increasingly to freelancers like Carroll. Compared to staff writers, they're cheap.

Carroll freelanced for The Christian Science Monitor and several other publications -- in other words, she got paid per article. I don't know what she was earning. But as a former freelance foreign correspondent who has written for some of the same publications as Carroll, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and Platts Oilgram News, I assume she got a few hundred dollars per article. It's really not much for a multi-source showcase piece, written from a war zone amid myriad inconveniences and risks: electrical outages, irregular phone service, and vicious Muslim terrorists not inclined to look kindly upon an American woman writing for a paper called The Christian Science Monitor, for which she'd been working "on assignment" (to use the lexicon of freelance journalism).

Clearly, idealism, ambition, and a spirit of adventure are the motivating forces driving Carroll and other freelancers working abroad. And more than a few are encouraged by editors who suggest their freelancing may eventually lead to staff positions with a regular salary and usual benefits – the very things one expects in any decent job, whether an office...or a coal mine.

Carroll would have enjoyed none of the benefits enjoyed by staff writers in Iraq: No bullet-proof vests; no war-zone training; no armed guards. Forget about insurance of any kind. (The Christian Science Monitor, to be sure, has yet to comment publicly on these issues; however, it appears she was not treated like a typical freelancer.) Even so, she was on her own, living in what The New York Times described as a modest "threadbare" room -- all for the love of journalism. (See correction/author's note, below.)

There's a certain hypocrisy at play when one compares the media's attitude toward freelancers like Carroll against the values it professes as a noble and vigilant watchdog of the public's trust. Consider the mining accident at the Sago mine in West Virginia, which occurred just days before Carroll's kidnapping. The mainstream media quickly raised its collective voice in anger over every hint of safety violations at the mine. Yet when it comes to journalists like Carroll, it tolerates and even encourages the same abuses it gleefully excoriates in those who fall into its journalistic cross hairs.

The public hasn't a clue about what's going on. The average reader would never suspect Carroll's freelance status by looking at her byline in The Christian Science Monitor or other publications for which she wrote. Most would assume she was part of the paper's foreign staff.

In Iraq and elsewhere, Carroll was part of what might be called a three-tier system of news gathering; it enables news outlets to cut cost and boost profits, all while delivering a credible product.

Staff reporters are in the top tier. They earn decent salaries and get a variety of benefits. Next are freelancers along with "contract" reporters. Freelancers are paid per article; contract reporters get a salary but one that's probably below what a staff reporter gets. There are no benefits. And as many editors will tell new contract reporters, they're responsible for paying their taxes when living abroad (wink, wink). I say this based on my own experience as a contact reporter in Jamaica for the Associated Press. I worked there for a few months in 2001 until leaving (full disclosure here) after a row with a news editor.

On the bottom rung are news assistants or "fixers" who, in places like Iraq, are Iraqis. (See my article from Editor & Publisher, here.) Fixers may set up interviews and help with translation; they'll serve as guides and may even do a bit of reporting despite limited journalism training. In Iraq, they've become vital. That's especially so for the Associated Press, whose staff reporters tend to stay holed up in the safety of their offices in the U.S.-controlled "Green Zone."

Not surprisingly, Iraqi fixers are taking the bulk of the risk, and doing most of the dying. According to the Society of Professional Journalists, more than 20 news assistants have been killed in the line of duty in Iraq since 2003, including 20 Iraqis and one Lebanese. During the same period, 55 journalists have been killed in the performance of their jobs - 65 percent or 36 of whom were Iraqis. Only two were Americans. Nine were from Europe and the rest form other countries including the Middle East, according to SPJ

That Iraqi fixers or news assistants are dying in the greatest numbers is another of the news media's dirty little secrets. Like freelancers and contract reporters, they generally work without benefits or insurance; there are just a handful of exceptions. Yet they are at the greatest risks because of Iraq's sectarian and political violence; not to mention widespread Internet access, which exposes fixers to retaliation when stories they played a part in are posted on media web sites.

Last August, Steven Vincent, an American freelance journalist who wrote for several conservative publications, was kidnapped with his translator, Nour Itais. Vincent was shot to death; Nour shot and left for dead. The incident occurred just three days after Vincent had published an Op-Ed in The New York Times criticizing the increasing infiltration of the Basran police force by Islamic extremists.

When put within a certain context, there is more than just a little hypocrisy here. What, after all, would happen if the news media in Iraq learned U.S. military commanders were sending African-American and Hispanic soldiers on its most dangers missions -- while keeping white troops confined to secure bases? Such a revelation would ignite a journalistic feeding frenzy. On the other hand, there's little if any public soul searching by the media in respect to its relationship to its fixers and freelancers.

Is Iraq an aberration in this respect? I doubt it. During my reporting days in Jamaica, for example, the Associated Press issued me a bullet proof vest. I needed it because gritty sections of Jamaica's capital, Kingston, occasionally descend into raging civil conflict, with violent inner-city gangs, divided along political lines and with loose ties to local politicians, engaging in bloody shoot-outs.

Interestingly, however, no bullet proof vests were issued to the AP's local freelance photographer or freelance correspondent. Yet when the photographer expressed the least bit of hesitation about covering a nasty shootout or violent demonstration, the AP's top two editors in its Caribbean bureau were upset. They intimated he had a yellow streak and talked of getting rid of him.

Both of these guys were black Jamaicans and thus were at a far greater risk than me, a white American; for they could easily be mistaken for combatants when covering a spasm of unrest on an island whose population is overwhelmingly black. It's the same situation for all those Iraqi news assistants - a fact underscored by the way Carroll's kidnappers wasted no time in shooting her translator in the head.

What would Al Sharpton make of all this?

CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and the Miami Herald are reportedly among a few news outlets that, in some ways, treat their fixers as employees – a practice that nevertheless is not widespread, according to an article titled “The Fixers” in the current issue of Dangerous Assignments, published by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In that same article, Mark Seibel, managing international editor of Knight-Ridder's Washington Bureau, expressed uncertainty about the obligations media outlets have toward protecting their fixers. "The relationship is informal contract labor,” he observed. “How far should an international news organization go to help them? There is probably a need to review and go over polices.”

For Seibel to suggest he has given no thought to this is puzzling. A highly capable editor, Seibel has spent most of his career with Knight-Ridder; and that includes during the years the news chain eliminated numerous foreign bureaus and came to rely on freelancers such as me: I was the Caracas correspondent for The Herald's international edition for four years in the late 1990's, an edition for which Seibel was responsible.

It was a great job. Hugo Chavez was coming to power, and Seibel put my name on the edition's masthead. And although the señoritas were impressed, the fact is I was just a freelancer, a guy making an irregular salary who had no benefits.

When my apartment was robbed and laptop stolen, The Herald could have cared less. I had hoped the paper might have an old laptop lying around to send me. But Seibel's comment, which a sympathetic editor relayed to me, was the same one he offered to Dangerous Assignments: We don't have a policy on that.

As to Jill Carroll, it will be interesting to see how much The Christian Science Monitor and others for which she freelanced will do to help her out at this point. Will anybody offer her a fulltime job? It was certainly decent of The Monitor's editors, days after her kidnapping, to prevail upon news outlets to impose a limited black out on reporting her name and media affiliation, the idea being that this might afford her some protection from Muslim fanatics.

My own sense was the Carroll was pretty much on her own during her freelancing career and kidnapping ordeal. It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out.

Related reading: "The Jill Carroll/Jordan Times Connection: It's Worse Than Her Critics Imagine."


May 9, 2006
Correction/Author’s Note:
A staff reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, Dan Murphy, recently e-mailed me from Baghdad to protest how I described The Monitor’s relationship with Jill Carroll.

Murphy disputed my contention that Carroll, during her freelancing days with The Monitor, endured the hardscrabble life of a typical freelancer – living on her own in a budget hotel, and enjoying none of the same benefits as the Monitor’s staff reporters.

Carroll, to be sure, had lived such a life for at least one year in Baghdad – a life she described in a colorful article in last year’s February/March issue of American Journalism Review. But when she started freelancing for The Monitor in mid-February, the paper took the unusual step of providing her the same benefits as staffers, even though it compensated her as a freelancer – in other words, paying her for each article. She “had access to precisely the same security arrangements and insurance cover that our staffers enjoyed,” Murphy insisted. She also started to live at The Monitor’s rented hotel facilities, which serve as housing and editorial offices, he said.

I have no reason to disbelieve Murphy. My suggestion that Carroll continued to live a hand-to-mouth existence, while freelancing for The Monitor, should have been more circumspect given what was known -- and unknown – at the time I wrote this article, not long after Carroll’s kidnapping.

That said, the article’s main theme – the mainstream media’s exploitation of freelancers – remains accurate. Readers can decide for themselves whether The Monitor’s unusual relationship with an accomplished but young journalist like Carroll, providing her employee benefits but paying her as a freelancer, was part of the cost-cutting trends I criticized. Even so, there’s no denying that The Monitor treated Carroll better than other news outlets for which she freelanced.

In preparing this article, I should note that not long after Carroll’s kidnapping, I exchanged e-mails with Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim. But citing the precariousness of Carroll’s situation, he declined to clarify his paper’s relationship with her, saying only that my “assumptions…about our relations with and treatment of Jill are wrong.”

With Bergenheim declining to elaborate, I was left with Carroll’s account in AJR. A quick Google search for her byline prompted me to infer, mistakenly, that she was freelancing for The Monitor when she wrote that piece. Reinforcing my assumption that Carroll endured a hardscrabble freelancer’s life, while writing for The Monitor, was a piece in The New York Times: “For Freelancer Held Hostage, Caution Fell Short,” published Jan. 23, 2006.

It referred to Carroll’s “threadbare” and “inexpensive” hotel room – a description that echoed what Carroll had described in her AJR article. To me this suggested Carroll, despite Bergenheim’s claims to the contrary, was still pretty much on her own. In fact, as Murphy pointed out, her “threadbare” room was at The Monitor’s rented hotel facilities – a detail The Times’ article omitted.

Murphy, incidentally, objected to The Times’ description of Carroll’s room, noting author Sabrina Tavernise never visited it. Tavernise told me in an e-mail from Baghdad that an Iraqi reporter and photographer employed by The Times had visited the room and described it to her.

Yet another detail that was unknown to me is that after Carroll’s kidnapping, The Monitor secretly added her to its reporting staff. This, Murphy explained, was to ensure she had a financial “cushion” after her release. The Monitor waited until after her release to publicize this, he explained, because of concerns that revealing this while she was in captivity would jeopardize her situation with her kidnappers.

Murphy, incidentally, declined to answer my question about how much Carroll earned per article, saying he was “not going to tell you or anyone else.” But another Monitor freelancer, the late Steven Vincent, earned $300 apiece for three articles "if I remember rightly," said his widow, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, in an e-mail to me.