CNN clashes with media over armed Tikrit convoy

US rolling news channel CNN was criticised by fellow journalists on Friday for having armed security guards protect a correspondent…

US rolling news channel CNN was criticised by fellow journalists on Friday for having armed security guards protect a correspondent heading into Saddam Hussein's home town during the Iraq war last month.

The row erupted when CNN International's President Chris Cramer said at the launch of a body to promote journalists' safety that the media sometimes needed armed protection.

"On some occasions, some of us may need to provide armed security," said Mr Cramer, who is also the honorary president of the new body, the International News Safety Institute. Mr Cramer said the convoy which took correspondent Brent Sadler into the town of Tikrit on April 13 had returned fire after being shot at by a chasing car.

"Brent Sadler is not a person who lightly takes risks," he said.

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As well as protection in combat, reporters needed security because they had so much cash and valuable equipment with them, Cramer said. "We are mobile ATM machines. We are highly robbable," he said.

Mr Cramer's fellow speakers -- from Reuters, Arabic news channel al-Jazeera and the British Broadcasting Corporation -- said their journalists would not have travelled with an armed convoy.

"The position of the channel is that you shouldn't have protection," said Mr Ahmad Kamel, head of al-Jazeera's Brussels office.

"It's very dangerous for the media. It gives the impression that all journalists are involved. Once one or two journalists do it you give the impression they're all doing it, and then you are in the war," he said. Mr Mark Damazer, the BBC's deputy director of news, said the BBC would examine what had happened to CNN in Tikrit.

"Our current procedure is different from CNN's but I think we will be reviewing it as a result of this war," he said.

"We need to ask ourselves whether the way we're doing it now is exactly right in the kind of circumstances that these guys confronted."