Iraqis report the news at their peril

By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi cameraman Sameer Jabbar will never forget the feel of the pistol pressed against his head last month or the words of one of his two kidnappers.

"'Let's just kill him anyway'", he recounted the gun-wielding kidnapper saying, after Jabbar's local television station had paid around $30,000 (15,000 pounds) in ransom for his release.

Jabbar does not know why, but the other kidnapper said he should live, and he was freed.

Jabbar's experience -- he was snatched in Baghdad while covering a story and held for 36 hours -- is just one of the scores of anecdotes that illustrate why Iraq is the most dangerous country in the world for reporters.

The Vienna-based International Press Institute said in April that 46 journalists were killed last year in Iraq, of whom 44 were Iraqis. Overall, more than 100 journalists, 80 of them Iraqi, have been killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Foreign journalists live and work in fortified compounds. Iraqis working for local media, especially outside Baghdad, don't have that protection.

"Everyone hates journalists -- the government, the militants and the Americans," Jabbar, 53, told Reuters.

On Wednesday, two Iraqi journalists, a clerk for their media firm and their driver were dragged from their car, tortured and then shot dead by gunmen near the northern city of Kirkuk.