Ordeal of Freed Times Reporters Highlights Dangers Faced by Journalists

Gunfire. Sexual assault. Beatings.

These are just a few of the abuses New York Times reporters and photographers said they suffered when they were captured by the Libyan government and held for six days until their release Monday, a stark reminder of the huge risks often taken by journalists when they cover some of the world's most important and compelling stories.

The journalists' account of the ordeal is harrowing. It began when their driver accidentally drove into a checkpoint manned by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and the group was immediately ambushed and nearly killed by a barrage of bullets. After surviving the gunfire, Anthony Shadid, Stephen Farrell, Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario were captured by Libyan soldiers. And for days, they weren't sure whether they were going to live or die.

"I heard in Arabic, 'Shoot them,' " Shadid, the Times' Beirut bureau chief, recalled one soldier saying, according to the Times. "And we all thought it was over." Shadid said that soldier, however, was overruled by a second who pointed out that the reporters were American and should not be killed.

Photographer Addario, the only woman in the group, said she was repeatedly groped, punched in the face and humiliated. "There was a lot of groping," Addario told the Times. "Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes."

And the four are some of the fortunate ones. As the world continues to read reports of Libya's revolution compiled by reporters risking their lives inside the country, at least 13 other journalists are still missing, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The group said it has recorded at least 50 attacks on the press since the conflict in Libya began last month, at least two of them deadly. The missing include Agence France-Presse journalists Dave Clark and Roberto Schmidt, as well as Getty photographer Joe Raedle. The three were reportedly captured by soldiers loyal to Gadhafi at gunpoint last week and are in Libyan state custody.

Asra Nomani, a veteran journalist whose three-year investigation of the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, called "The Pearl Project," was published this year, said reporting is becoming increasingly dangerous. Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan while reporting on Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber."

"Danny wasn't a cowboy. He chose not to go into the combat zone. But now in the modern day, the combat zone is the entire world," Nomani, who worked at The Wall Street Journal and was a friend of Pearl's, told AOL News in a phone interview today. "After Danny was kidnapped and murdered, it felt like we all walked around with these targets on our backs. Now it's fair game to go after journalists and get away with it."

Nomani said the rising role of the Internet in political movements around the world makes journalists both more powerful and more likely to be targeted. "With information becoming more accepted and widespread in the world, people see journalists as more of a threat," she said. "We're considered combatants."

Robert Mahoney, the deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the situation is even more dangerous for Libyan reporters, six of whom are missing. "Generally it's the local journalists who are most at risk. They function as the eyes and ears of the foreign press," Mahoney told AOL News in a phone interview today. "The Western correspondents leave and the local reporters are subject to all kinds of pressures."

A reporter's job is to tell the story, not become a part of it, but for journalists working in conflict zones like Libya, the lines can sometimes blur. This week, a fiery debate between two reporters made headlines when a CNN correspondent working in Libya slammed a Fox News report for claiming that Western journalists prevented the bombing of Gadhafi's compound by taking a government-sponsored tour of the area.

Nic Robertson, the CNN correspondent, called the report "outrageous and hypocritical." He said the journalists weren't in the compound long enough to serve as human shields and noted that Fox News sent a representative of its own on the trip, albeit not a journalist.

Tuesday, Steve Harrigan, one of the Fox News correspondents who wrote the piece, hit Robertson back. "[Robertson is] in the same hotel as me. A man could come down and say, 'what's up?' But instead he's saying I'm lazy, that I'm a liar and that I'm as bad as Gaddafi," Harrigan told the Huffington Post. Jennifer Griffin, the other Fox News correspondent who wrote the piece, said the controversy was silly. "I just think this has gotten ugly," Griffin told Mediabistro/TV Newser.com. "Frankly, CNN should be focusing on getting more scoops and not attacking Fox News. They should get back to reporting and stop this petulant behavior."

Mahoney said he hadn't heard any reports of journalists being used as human shields to protect the Libyan regime.

The brutal beating and sexual assault of CBS News correspondent Lara Logan in Egypt also captured Americans' attention and raised questions about the particular dangers sometimes faced by women reporters in conflict zones. Mahoney said the Committee to Protect Journalists is updating its handbook to provide more information for women journalists about how to deal with special risks they may face. But he said the greater goal was for news organizations to continue to improve the safety training they offer to all of their correspondents in conflict zones.