Media can best protect reporters

By Graham H. Tye, North Las Vegas

Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014 | 2:03 a.m.

In response to Caroline Little’s Other Voices of Oct. 10 (“It’s time to protect journalists who risk their lives to report the news”), the media themselves have the means by which to best protect journalists operating in war zones.

To quote Margaret Thatcher at the American Bar Association in 1985, “We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.”

International media could deploy its most powerful protective weapon by making clear that an attack on reporters will be met with the “disappearance” of the organization held responsible. For instance:

“If you harm reporters, the name of your organization will never appear in media, your leaders and followers will never be named, your actions will never be reported, your leaders will never be quoted or asked for comment, nor will you receive a response to requests for media time.”

Could (understandable) ambition, the search for a Nobel, encourage excessive risk? Today’s social media is all over everything. I don’t need anybody to risk his or her life for “news.”