Captive Media

Le Monde carries good coverage today of the liberation of the journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot after 124 days as hostages of the Islamic Army insurgent group in Iraq. Since the kidnapping on August 20th, this is a story that never died in France - every night French TV news ended their bulletins with a note of how long Chesnot and Malbrunot had been in captivity. There was also a rare show of unity across the political spectrum in the French media, with Edwy Plenel, the editor of Le Monde expressing his solidarity with the staff of Le Figaro, for whom Malbrunot was a correspondent.

Indeed the unity of outrage around the world about the victimisation of journalists in the Iraq conflict has been remarkable. While I don't want to idealise the job of a journalist, the deliberate targeting of the media by terrorist or insurgent groups seems, at best, counter-productive. And the fact that Malbrunot and Chesnot were French, spoke Arabic and had many years of experience in Middle East reporting makes their kidnapping even more bizarre.

As Chesnot's brother, Thierry, said today, "C'est un magnifique cadeau de Noël" .

It is tragic that the same edition of Le Monde also has to detail the assassination of Gambian journalist Deida Hydara.