The fact of the matter

Iraq is too dangerous for journalists to do proper work there, say former BBC journalists Rageh Omaar and Martin Bell. No it isn't, counters their one-time colleague John Simpson. So who's right? asks David Fickling.

Certainly Iraq is turning into a graveyard for journalists. War correspondents were once thought to have charmed lives, filing their reports unscathed while death and destruction rumbled around them. But in Iraq, the death toll of 127 journalists following the killings of two British CBS journalists yesterday compares grimly to the tally of 113 British soldiers killed.