5 Mill..

April 19, 2007 - 3:30 PM by Stephanie

Don’t get me started on a rant. It’s Thursday – end of the week, beautiful weather outside, Independence Day is next week and all of that good stuff.

But when I read this week that BBC Correspondent Alan Johnston – who disappeared in Gaza mid-March and is still being held – was:

1st) Executed
2nd) Not really executed but being held by a mob-tied clanasking for $5 mill in ransom

my blood boiled.

The day the execution story came up online with the promise of execution video “to appear in the coming hours”, I immediately picked up the phone to a few colleagues working with foreign press agencies here in Israel.

No way! Is it true? Do you think they stepped over that line?

Because it is a line. Execute a foreign journalist and boy oh boy how the rules of the game will change. Never mind that things in Gaza have been chaotic for not a little while now and what was Johnston doing there anyway and blah dee blah. Not important at the moment.

As a journalist who occasionally wants to exercise the privilege of interviewing people in Gaza or Ramallah or wherever, I hate the idea of weighing things up twice or eight times prior because the rules of the game changed. And Alan Johnston’s family hates the idea of not knowing what in the heck is going on with their son.

And as a journalist who knows that for the most part journalists are doing a job and carrying a message out to the world, I think using them as bargaining bait for political or monetary gain stinks.

I ranted. Sorry. Sue me. I hope Mr. Johnston is released soon.

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