Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh

Reuters journalists should thank Michael Reupke for justifiably taking the current editor-in-chief to task for a mealy-mouthed response to the video footage of the killing of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh by US forces in Baghdad.

A robust public statement is not a matter of "sounding off" - as Tom Glocer calls it - but of holding the authorities in a democracy that purports to respect the work of journalists to account for their actions and, in this case, their unconscionable failure to follow through on their own commitments.

In August 2003, almost four years before Namir and Saeed were killed, Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was shot dead in Iraq by US forces who said they mistook his camera for an RPG launcher. "We will do everything in our power to make sure things like this do not happen again," a US military spokesman, Lt. Col. Guy Shields, said at the time. In March 2004, after Reuters had pushed vigorously for a proper investigation of Mazen’s killing, a US military review exonerated the soldiers involved but made important recommendations to help make war zones less dangerous for journalists. One of the recommendations, which Reuters welcomed, was to "investigate better methods of identifying journalists in the theatre of war". It is questionable whether the US military ever did anything about its own recommendations, given that the helicopter crew who killed Namir and Saeed so readily concluded yet again that cameras were weapons.

Thomson Reuters needs to speak out before another journalist with a camera falls victim to the US military’s failure to take the steps it recommended in its own review into one of all too many needless killings. “Quiet engagement” without public accountability won’t work. ■