Levels Of Communication Competence Of War Correspondents And The Obstacles They Face A Field Study Of Iraqi War Correspondents

Abstract

This study examines the level of communicative competence of war correspondents working in the Iraqi satellite channels who conducted a full coverage of the events of the liberation battles in which they participated. Thus, the study aims at determining the levels of communication competence of the Iraqi war correspondents, in addition to the most important obstacles they may face. Therefore, the researcher limited the war correspondents in Iraq working inside the Iraqi satellite channels, and conducted a survey using the questionnaire tool to obtain the required data and information. The study reached a number of results, the most important of which are: There are four basic skills that war correspondents shall possess, which indicates their level of communicative competence: Speaking-skills, which must be mastered by a war correspondent by 46.5%, Speech-skills 26.7%, The skill of conducting dialogue17.5%, and Writing-skills 9.3%. We conclude that, despite the relative discrepancy between the skills possessed by the correspondents, it indicates multiple layers of mastering communicative competence. The relative importance of this group constituted of 77.6%, which represents the level of communicative competence of war correspondents.