Front Line, Information Age-style

The following headline struck me as slightly anemic:

Beirut Car Bomb Kills Lawmaker, a Critic of Syria

Forty-eight year-old Gebran Tueni was managing director of Lebanon's daily newspaper Al-Nahar.

I hear the Committee to Protect Journalists puts on fancy dinners.

Is there really any way to protect a journalist?

I wouldn't be surprised if this question turns up somewhere in the no-doubt-in-the-works New Yorker piece on any number of prominent dead journalists.

Forbes Russia editor-in-chief Paul Klebnikov, who was murdered in July 2004, in Moscow, would be the most natural choice. According to CPJ, the jury trial is scheduled to begin December 29. Who ordered his murder? I wonder if we'll ever know. CPJ notes that its people have urged prosecutors to reconsider a November decision to hold the trial in camera.

Again: is there ever really a way to protect journalists? Is that even a viable question?

Lower down on CPJ's site, beneath the Tueni obituary, is another kind of obituary. Another kind of sadness, for me anyway. It begins:

"Accreditation of last independent foreign broadcaster in Uzbekistan withheld

New York, December 12, 2005—Uzbekistan today denied accreditation to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), silencing the last independent foreign broadcaster reporting from the country."

And goes on from there. Sometimes, one wishes somebody got the facts wrong.