Media Safety Quotes

I would never let myself knock out a journalist.

By journalistic custom and D.C. law, of course, reporters don't carry guns to news conferences -- and certainly not when the person at the lectern is the NRA's Asa Hutchinson, an unremarkable former congressman and Bush administration official whom most reporters couldn't pick out of a lineup. But the NRA wasn't going to leave any doubt about its superior firepower.

The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work. They are increasingly seen as not being neutral but rather as combatants by one side or the other.

An average of more than one journalist a week has been killed for reasons connected to his or her work.

It's totally mistaken to suppose that an armed escort is going to give a journalist any protection - on the contrary, journalists who turn up surrounded by armed personnel are just turning themselves into targets and in even worse danger.

Prisons and jails, I tend to feel that you're actually safer as a journalist than you might think, certainly more than it appears.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

In just one year in Bosnia, thirty of my colleagues died. There is a little Somme waiting for all innocent journalists.