Press: Bang Gang

Armed reporters in Rhodesia

Winston Churchill packed a pistol when he covered the Boer War for London's Morning Post, and it was hardly a farewell to arms when Gun Fancier Ernest Hemingway went off to report the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. But to most front-line journalists nowadays, carrying a weapon while on assignment is a grievous offense against professional ethics. It also means forfeiture of a journalist's status under international law as a neutral noncombatant, and it encourages troops to consider all journalists as fair targets.

In the guerrilla war now raging in Rhodesia, however, that convention has...

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