$1 million Baghdad security budget

Peter Morello of University of Missouri-Kansas City (UKMC), Matthew Schofield of The Kansas City Star and activist Mike Murphy held a roundtable at UKMC to discuss the war in Iraq and the nature of reporting conflict, issues around embedding and the sheer expense of it all,

“It’s become expensive to have reporters in different countries,” Schofield said. “So you only see snippets of things – and things happen so fast. In 2003, there were four of us in Iraq and we could go pretty much anywhere. In 2006, our bureau had 14 people in Baghdad and an annual security budget of $1 million. We could barely put our noses out the door.” Schofield said they wanted to do a boat trip down the Euphrates River. “We had this idea to do our own ‘Heart of Darkness’ thing,” he said. “It wasn’t possible. The river was physically blockaded in 14 different points.” link