FISK FISKED BY HIS OWN EDITORS:

Geoff Hoon, Robert Fisk and reporting the truth (The Independent, 04 April 2003)

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, is a smooth politician who relies on nuance to do his dirty work. He did not say, in plain terms, that he disbelieves The Independent's accounts of civilian casualties sustained in Iraq. He did not say that Robert Fisk, our award-winning reporter, is a willing dupe of Saddam Hussein's regime. He simply allowed those suggestions to hang, unspoken, in the House of Commons chamber yesterday.

"A piece of a cruise missile was handed to the journalist," he said, to explain how we were able to publish the serial number of the missile likely to have been responsible for the second Baghdad marketplace explosion last Friday, which killed about 62 civilians.

Robert Fisk has a proud record of reporting what he sees. He has travelled to dangerous places and described unflinchingly what is happening. He prefers to speak to the people caught up in conflicts rather than report what the generals, politicians and spokesmen are saying.

Any careful reader of his reports from Iraq would know that he holds no brief for the Saddam regime.

Of course he's a willing Saddamite dupe, which their own editorial implicitly admits with that precious bit about a "careful reader" being able to discern that Mr. Fisk isn't pro-Saddam. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2003 10:29 PM