'From our Baghdad correspondent'

This statement crops up often in newspapers and breaking news broadcasts on television. It suggests that a journalist is in touch with the events and atmosphere of the Baghdad streets. Yet Iraq has reportedly become so dangerous for journalists, it is impossible for them to do their job properly.

The Independent's Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk has long criticised other journalists based in Iraq for their reluctance to take to the streets to connect with ordinary Iraqis, a phenomenon he called 'hotel journalism'. Now he has coined a term to describe the way many journalists now operate in Iraq: 'mouse journalism'. This is the practice of turning up at the scene of an event and staying just long enough to get a story before the gunmen arrive.

Fisk revealed that since the risk of kidnap and murder is so high, he spends minimal time with interviewees or at bomb scenes. He gives himself just 12 minutes for interviews, because that is how long he believes it takes a man with a mobile phone to summon gunmen to the scene in a car.

The problem is not confined to the cities. It is also difficult to get access to free information outside Baghdad or Basra. Most of the reporters who can travel do so as members of military convoys with armour to protect themselves along roads infested with insurgents, checkpoints and throat-cutters. 

This raises serious questions about the reliability of reports emerging from Iraq, as it is clear that journalists do not have the time to develop sources. All this makes for a salutary tale: "our correspondents" in Baghdad often cannot tell us very much.