ISLAMABAD, March 10: The US military has asserted that an American soldier was justified in erasing journalists’ footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, saying publication could have compromised a military investigation and led to false public conclusions.
The comments came in response to an Associated Press protest that a US soldier had forced two freelance journalists working for the US-based news agency to delete photos and video at the scene of violence on March 4 in Barikaw, eastern Afghanistan. At least eight Afghans were killed and 34 wounded.
‘’Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document,’’ Col Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top American commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter on Friday.
He added that photographs or video taken by ‘’untrained people’’ might ‘’capture visual details that are not as they originally were.’’
The Associated Press disputed the assertions.
‘’That is not a reasonable justification for erasing images from our cameras,’’ said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll in New York.
‘’AP’s journalists in Afghanistan are trained, accredited professionals working at an appropriate distance from the bombing scene.
“In democratic societies, legitimate journalists are allowed to work without having their equipment seized and their images deleted.’’
