Journalists Outside the Frame


The hundreds of journalists at Firdos Square were rarely shown on TV or in photos; their influence on the toppling was obscured. But a Marine who was at Firdos shared with me a series of photos that show the journalist-saturated scene around the statue. The first two photos in the set show the cameramen and photographers atop the M88 that took down the statue. The third photo shows them at the base of the statue, waiting for it to come down. The final photos show the mixture of photographers and Iraqis in the melee around the fallen head of Saddam. All photos by Bryan Mangan. Click here for the photo set.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.