How safe are war reporters?

Last Wednesday there was a memorial service for the 20 journalists who died in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussain. Relative to their numbers, and to the small scale of the war - because, let's face it, this wasn't D-Day - these were heavy losses: proportionately higher, perhaps, than anything since Germany invaded Russia in 1941.

But given the sheer power of weaponry, and the carelessness with which it was sometimes used, perhaps the fact that so many newspeople died is not so surprising. And wars like this are fought out in people's minds long afterwards. Only a week ago, just before the service, the Sky News reporter James Forlong committed suicide, leaving a widow and two children, one with Down's syndrome.

Faked report

James resigned from Sky after a BBC documentary showed that he had faked a missile-launching sequence in a news report. He and his family have paid a heavy price for that moment of foolishness. He, too, was a casualty of the war.

To me, it seemed strange that television should have devoted precious time to unmasking such smalltime fakery when no one had investigated why so many journalists died. Journalists themselves shy away from such self-examination, and no one else is interested.

Certainly not the Government: British governments have never shown much concern for them. Was there a single Government at the service? What do you think? One of the best reporters in British television news, Terry Lloyd, was killed early in the war by a young American marine, so panic-stricken that he failed to notice the clear coalition markings on Terry's vehicle or to remember that it had passed them earlier, heading into no man's land.

He killed Terry outright, and presumably his cameraman and translator too, though their bodies have mysteriously never been found.

If a bus driver ploughed into a Fleet Street queue, killing three people, he would be charged with criminal negligence. If an excitable US marine fires dozens of high-velocity bullets, each powerful enough to tear off a man's arm, into a car packed with people, he gets away scot-free. Maybe there was an inquiry into Terry's death; if so, no details have been made public.

Did the Government demand that the Americans conduct a proper, open investigation into the killing of one of this country's most respected journalists? What do you think?

One of the names on the memorial was that of my Kurdish translator, Kamaran Abdurrazaq Mohammed. He died in a so-called "friendly fire" incident on April 6, when an American F14, flying from USS Harry S. Truman, launched a Maverick missile at us instead of at an Iraqi tank nearby.

Eighteen people died, including Kamaran, and some of them burnt to death in front of our eyes. It was sheer criminal negligence on someone's part; perhaps the crew of the aircraft, which was flying at only 500ft - close enough to see exactly who we were - or perhaps the American officer on the ground, who called in the air strike.

Six months later we still do not know if there has even been a formal investigation. There is no sign of an official report. How long does it take to look into the details that were explained to us privately by a senior American officer only a couple of hours after the incident? What are the authorities so afraid of? Not legal action; the US forces are indemnified for acts of war. It may not have been much of a war, but as far as damages go it still counts as one.

Three weeks ago I went back to see Kamaran's family in northern Afghanistan. The BBC has dealt generously with them, and they welcomed us with much warmth. But I found that the small things mattered as much to them as the compensation: the fact that the BBC's book on the war had been dedicated to Kamaran's memory, and the way in which senior BBC executives had taken the trouble to acknowledge the family's grief.

Outweigh loss

When Kamaran's mother hears that his name has a place alongside James Forlong's and Terry Lloyd's at a London memorial service, her pride will, for a moment, outweigh her sense of loss.

To pay attention to these things, to demonstrate that it matters when the lives of people just doing their jobs are snuffed out, makes up for a great deal. Will the Bush administration or the British Government now pay attention? What do you think?

The writer is the World Affairs Editor for the BBC