NEW YORK, Jan 23 (AFP) - With Iraq now a minefield for journalists, US media are deploying reporters to cover the January 30 general election and obsessively trying to manage the danger and daily difficulties of the job.
Foreign correspondents, prized prey for kidnappers in Iraq, often find themselves limited to certain neighborhoods of Baghdad, and looking to the army for any trips out of the Iraqi capital.
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 54 journalists and their assistants have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Four have gone missing, including French journalist Florence Aubenas.
"We are going to do our very best" to cover the vote, said Marjorie Miller, foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times.
The newspaper has opted to send a large contingent of reporters, placing them in Najaf, Fallujah, Mosul, Kurdistan and Baghdad, both inside and outside the Green Zone. Two will be embedded with the US Army.
"We are trying to be in as many places as we can, but it's a big question mark about how free we will be to move, how close we can get to the polls and how complete of a picture we will have," Miller said.
"Americans in Iraq are probably bigger targets than other nationalities, because I think the Iraqis, there might be certain factions that resent Americans more because our country is the one who's occupying their country right now," said Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president for news coverage at CBS.
The television network is sending 20 to 30 correspondents, but they will remain in Baghdad unless they go out with the army.
"Unfortunately, we won't be able to go everywhere we'd like to go, but we'll go wherever we can and try to get the story and bring the story back to the American people as best we can," McGinnis said.
On the ground, reporters are taking every precaution, including employing armed guards and traveling in vehicle convoys.
Edward Wong has spent 10 months in Iraq for The New York Times since November 2003.
"I often make appointments with people. I don't spend much time walking around on the streets or looking for people to interview that way," Wong said.
"Right now, we do not drive outside of Baghdad on the main highways. Insurgents still control many parts of those roads, and ambushes along them are common. We try to get flights from the American military or others."
Two houses rented by the daily outside the Green Zone are protected by concrete blocks and a contingent of armed Iraqi guards.
US television networks have weekly conference calls to swap security information, according to NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley.
"Occasionally, we've got together and asked either the Iraqi government or the Pentagon for assistance in some way," he said.
Some media outlets have withdrawn their reporters, as did a popular entertainment weekly.
"It's too dangerous," said an editor of the magazine, speaking on condition of anonymity. "When we did have people out there, they stayed in a very confined 'green zone' and hardly left. If they left, they were heavily protected.
"There's no way you can get a sense of what anyone truly feels, except for the people that work in the hotel compound that most of the journalists are staying at."
Other media outlets are pressing on and trying not to rely only on American sources.
"I think that, even when you are embedded, you see an awful lot of things that are not necessarily in the interest of the US military. We just try to balance it as best as we can, but it's an imperfect situation," said Miller.
"Safety is our primary concern," said Wheatley, who pointed to the importance of the network's Iraqi employees.
"We watch the situation all the time. We consider all the options, including leaving. For some time now, we've felt that this is a story of great importance to the American people, and we have proceeded in every way possible, under the necessity of safety, to cover the story."
"We do use local people; we don't take our information solely from one source," said CBS's McGinnis.
"We listen to what American authorities have to say, we listen to the Arab stations to see what that side has to say, we have local people on the ground who tell us what other people are saying, we have our reporters making phone calls to places to find out different points of view." "We are not relying on the official information. We are making extraordinary efforts to get out on the street and to talk to people," said David Hoffman, foreign editor of The Washington Post.
"We've been relying on local journalists and others for a long time now," he said.

01/23/2005 08:48 GMT - AFP