Only The New York Times underscores the strong emotions that Tuesday's incident triggered around the world and "prompted accusations that the United States military was deliberately aiming at journalists."

The daily quoted Imad Musa, an Al-Jazeera correspondent in Washington: "The feeling basically is they want to do something really ugly in Baghdad, and they don't want any Arab TV there, and they're just reinforcing it."

The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera on Tuesday called on US and British forces to help get its reporting team out of Baghdad, amid what it said were fears its reporters were now targets.

In a long article on the shooting incident, The Los Angeles Times stresses the US military's argument that its men were defending themselves from enemy fires, leaving at the end the protests of international journalists' rights groups.

In a separate analysis, the Los Angeles Times compares past and present working environments and risk factors for war reporters, mentioning that while only 63 journalists were killed during the Vietnam War (63), if the Iraqi war were to last as long, "4,368 journalists would die."

The Wall Street Journal notes that while the journalist death toll is alarmingly high, most US media outlets are not planning to make changes, believing it would be more dangerous to pull their reporters out of Baghdad than to leave them where they are.

"We thought there would be less danger to our reporters (than in previous conflicts), said CBS senior vice president Marcy McGinnis. "We heard about these bombs that were not going to hit civilian targets."

The Washington Post, however, said some television networks are starting to trim back their teams in Iraq "in the face of declining ratings as the war drama fades."

SPACE.WIRE