Hezbollah Threatens To Kill Reporter, Reporter Praises Hezbollah For Allowing The Press “Freedom”
From CNN's Reliable Sources, an exchange between Howard Kurtz and reporter Richard Engel:
Huh?
Is it just me or does that not make any sense? First Engel says that a Hezbollah representative has threatened to kill him unless he stops filming, then Engel says that Hezbollah has never told them to stop filming. Later in the transcript Engel even praises Hezbollah for giving him "a lot of freedom" to cover the hostilities.
To me, I guess, death threats aren't equivalent to freedom.
On a related note, why do you suppose Hezbollah doesn't want their rocket positions being filmed during launches? If they were concerned about giving away their positions to Israelis they wouldn't ever allow their positions to be filmed, right?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Hezbollah doesn't want footage of their fighters launching rockets from areas crowded with civilians lest it weaken the propaganda impact of civilian death tolls caused by Israel's inevitable response to the rocket launches?
I think that's pretty likely.
KURTZ: Richard Engel in Lebanon, let's talk a little bit about your efforts to cover Hezbollah. Have you had instances in which Hezbollah guerillas have tried to interfere with your reporting?
ENGEL: Yes and no; and the reason I'm giving you that answer is that until now Hezbollah has been very difficult to cover. We've come into town several times and only found Hezbollah fighters. They don't want to be on film. They will talk to us off camera, but when the cameras come out they suddenly go quiet.
They've not tried to stop us filming other events while we're in the field, but they have, on several occasions, threatened reporters here in Tyre, south Lebanon. From the location where we're standing right now, we've been able to see, today and on other days, outgoing Katyusha rockets. And on more than one occasion people from Hezbollah have come and said, "Do not film the locations of these rockets when they're being launched."
At one time, when we were talking and having a conversation with this Hezbollah representative, he said, "Look, we're serious, we will kill you if you film these outgoing rockets." So it is a threat, but when we've been out in the field, we've not had situations where they told us to stop filming.
Huh?
Is it just me or does that not make any sense? First Engel says that a Hezbollah representative has threatened to kill him unless he stops filming, then Engel says that Hezbollah has never told them to stop filming. Later in the transcript Engel even praises Hezbollah for giving him "a lot of freedom" to cover the hostilities.
To me, I guess, death threats aren't equivalent to freedom.
On a related note, why do you suppose Hezbollah doesn't want their rocket positions being filmed during launches? If they were concerned about giving away their positions to Israelis they wouldn't ever allow their positions to be filmed, right?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Hezbollah doesn't want footage of their fighters launching rockets from areas crowded with civilians lest it weaken the propaganda impact of civilian death tolls caused by Israel's inevitable response to the rocket launches?
I think that's pretty likely.
