HOW HEZBOLLAH INTIMIDATES THE MEDIA

AT LEAST THE MEDIA THAT'S NOT ALREADY ON ITS PAYROLL.

Engel: "We Will Kill You if You Film These Rockets" (LGF)
On CNN’s Reliable Sources, Richard Engel details Hizballah’s management of the news from Lebanon.

KURTZ: Richard Engel in Lebanon, let’s talk a little bit about your efforts to cover Hezbollah. Have you had instances in which Hezbollah guerillas have tried to interfere with your reporting?

ENGEL: Yes and no; and the reason I’m giving you that answer is that until now Hezbollah has been very difficult to cover. We’ve come into town several times and only found Hezbollah fighters. They don’t want to be on film. They will talk to us off camera, but when the cameras come out they suddenly go quiet.

They’ve not tried to stop us filming other events while we’re in the field, but they have, on several occasions, threatened reporters here in Tyre, south Lebanon. From the location where we’re standing right now, we’ve been able to see, today and on other days, outgoing Katyusha rockets. And on more than one occasion people from Hezbollah have come and said, “Do not film the locations of these rockets when they’re being launched.”

At one time, when we were talking and having a conversation with this Hezbollah representative, he said, “Look, we’re serious, we will kill you if you film these outgoing rockets.” So it is a threat, but when we’ve been out in the field, we’ve not had situations where they told us to stop filming.

TIME Reporter: Hizballah Has Our Passports (LGF)
For those who still don’t want to believe that Hizballah is stage managing the news from Beirut, please note this statement from TIME magazine reporter Christopher Allbritton, reported by J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss: Hate to Say We Told You So, But...

Time magazine stringer Christopher Allbritton, writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, casually illustrated this latter technique: “To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”