THE MEDIA: IPI Global Journalist, Third Quarter, 2000

WAIS does what it can to make the public realize the value of the work performed by journalists, who are the target of so much carping criticism. By its nature, WAIS is especially interested in international journalists, who do an important job often in dangerous circumstances. They provide an antidote to the ignorance and indifference of too many Americans to international affairs.

The latest of the IPA Global Journalists, sponsored by the Knight Foundation and published for the International Press Institute in Vienna by the Missouri School of Journalism, bears out our comments. The cover story is entitled "Reporting--and Surviving in Sierra Leone." There are also articles on Bosnia, Russia, Georgia, Africa, Haiti, and Fiji. Because of our deep concern about Basque terrorism, we are specially interested in "The Basque Reality," subtitled "Militant separatist group's brutality is called worse than former dictator Franco's". The author is Noemi Ramirez, research editor of the important Spanish newspaper El Mundo, whose staff and offices have been the targets of ETA violence. The Franco dictatorshiop persecuted journalists but did not kill them as ETA does. Spaniards, including most Basques except the terrorists themselves, are aghast at the ruthless killing of innocent people.

The terrorists have a special mentality, and in Spain there was a gang of anarchists of whom ETA and the smaller terrorist group Grapo are the survivors. I knew the Basque Pío Baroja and regard him as pathological, like the ETA killers. He loved to tell in lurid detail the killings of leading Spaniards in the earlier years of the last century, when the anarchists were very active. At the end of each story, seeing that I did not appreciate his stories, he would admit "It's terrible!" then, his eyes gleaming, "But it's interesting, isn't it?"

Ronald Hilton - 10/28/00