Jill Carroll: Blaming the Victim

Jill Carroll: Blaming the Victim

March 31, 2006

Yesterday, journalist Jill Carroll — 82 days after she was kidnapped in Iraq — was released from captivity. While President Bush has often said that media does not cover enough “good news” in Iraq, Carroll’s ordeal underscores the extraordinary danger of doing any reporting at all from the war-torn country. Even Bush has said it was “a little early” for him to visit Iraq. Instead of spending yesterday honoring Carroll’s courage and sacrifice, many on the right attacked her, calling her everything from a terrorist sympathizer to mentally imbalanced. After what Carroll went through, it was a shameful display.

• Iraq is still a dangerous place for journalists. Out of a justified concern for their safety, many journalists in Iraq conduct all their reporting from the “Green Zone,” rooftops and hotel balconies. Carroll wanted to tell the story of ordinary Iraqis, and often reported outside of the Green Zone, while taking precautions to ensure her safety. Carroll and other journalists are becoming rarer in Iraq — the number of foreign journalists in Iraq is now 70, down from 700 at the beginning of the war.
  
  
• Instead of celebrating her freedom, some in the media took the opportunity to make light of her situation. Hours after Carroll’s release Bernard McGurik, the executive producer of “Imus in the Morning” (who also appears on air), said that Carroll “strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the — try and sneak into the Green Zone.” Imus’ sidekick Charles McCord was concerned that Carroll was “a person who strived for their, represented their [the Iraqi people’s] plight for a long, long time.” (Don Imus, to his credit, repeatedly told McGurik and McCord to shut up. Unfortunately, he wasn’t successful.)
  
  
• The National Review jumps into the fray, questioning Carroll’s mental state. The National Review’s John Podhoretz said “after watching someone who was a hostage for three months say on television she was well-treated because she wasn’t beaten or killed — while being dressed in the garb of a modest Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is — I expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days.” Apparently because Carroll was wearing the Muslim garb that she used as a safety precaution, Podhoretz couldn’t believe that she was telling truth. His colleague Jonah Goldberg added that it “is increasingly starting to bug me,” and concluded, “I’m very glad she’s alive, but I’m getting a very bad vibe.”