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[casi] Spanish journalists snub Straw



Bravo.  Would that US journalists had the guts of the Spanish.

It is so very important to make officials pay a price for every single press
attack. Nothing at this point is more important to us. If our voices go
unheard because an intimidated press refuses to make them heard worldwide,
we are really in trouble.

Focus of public protests ought to be on loudly demanding world press freedom
and protection of all journalists..    pg


Guardian  http://tinyurl.com/97qj
Spanish journalists snub Straw

Journalists walk out of press conference in protest at deaths of Baghdad
reporters.

Spanish journalists today snubbed Spain's prime minister and Britain's
foreign secretary in protest at the death of the Spanish TV cameraman who
was killed by a US tank shell in Baghdad.
At a speech at Madrid's senate today, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
expressed his condolences for Jose Couso, a journalist working for Spanish
TV network Tele 5 who was killed at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, and for
Julio Anguito Parrado, a Spanish journalist killed on Monday when an Iraqi
missile hit a US military base south of Baghdad.

However, between 30 and 40 journalists present boycotted the speech by
downing their cameras, microphones and notebooks and standing in stony
silence.

Also today about 20 Spanish journalists walked out of a press conference in
Paris with Jack Straw and his Spanish counterpart, Ana Palacio, after just
one question.

A colleague of Couso at Tele 5 asked Ms Palacio about reports that US forces
had declared the Palestine Hotel a military target 48 hours before the blast
that killed Couso and Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk.

The hotel has been the centre for most of the foreign media in the Iraqi
capital throughout the war.

Ms Palacio was evasive, referring the questioner to comments by the Spanish
defence minister, Federico Trillo, who recommended last night that Spanish
journalists should leave Baghdad because the city had grown too dangerous.

But she said Spain was determined to press the US for a thorough
investigation, saying: "I've been told there circumstances that were at the
least surprising."

Mr Aznar was targeted again in the afternoon in the lower chamber of Spain's
parliament as he arrived for a weekly question-and-answer session with the
opposition.

A dozen photographers, who usually gather round to film him taking his seat,
suddenly turned their backs on the prime minister and held up enlarged
photos of Couso. Opposition politicians clapped at the gesture.

Hundreds of journalists also protested on outside the US embassy in Madrid.




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