UPDATE: In light of the current uproar over the killing of an Italian intelligence agent and wounding of Giuliana Ggrena, I found Was Giuliana Sgrena Targeted? by Danny Schecter very interesting.

CNN's Eason Jordan resigned over reaction to his assertion that journalists had been targeted in Iraq. The sad thing is that he was telling a truth well substantiated. I'm sure some of the deaths of journalists were accidental, fog of war and all that, but others are inexplicable, so bald and obvious of circumstance I am left gawping at the brazeness. This quote from a CNN transcript in March of 2003 speaks volumes. Strip away the justifications about eliminating "propaganda" and what do you have?

BLITZER: Why is Iraqi television still on the air? A lot of people wonder whether or not you can, if you wanted to, take it off the air?

MYERS: Well, let me just say we're working on that. We understand some of the TV is up, some is down. Radio broadcasts are more sporadic. It's a fairly robust infrastructure inside Iraq. And it will take, it'll take some time.

Clearly they use that television for propaganda. They use it for command and control, and it's one of our targets. You know very well from knowing some of the target sets that have been struck up in Baghdad that, indeed, that is one of our objectives.

BLITZER: So is it fair to say it's a legitimate target, Iraqi television, and that you are still trying to knock it off the air?

MYERS: Oh, absolutely, it's a legitimate target. The regime uses it for command and control. That's how the leadership gets the message out. It's absolutely a legitimate target. But let me just remind all the viewers that one of the things that a great power does, and great powers in this case the coalition, does is try to minimize civilian casualties. And so whatever we do to try to take out various components of the regime, leadership, command and control and so forth, we're going to try to minimize civilian casualties. That's just going to be part of the equation. And I think we've done a good job up until now to do that.

There's also a good examination of some of the examples of attacks on journalists here at MediaChannel.