The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias writes about the case of Canadian Richard Gizbert, who was let go by ABC News after refusing a "voluntary" assignment to Iraq.

An excerpt:

Even before 9/11, Gizbert felt he had done his fair share of war reporting.

The father of two says he renegotiated his contract, foregoing his "$200,000 a year (U.S.) guaranteed salary," plus housing and schooling allowances for his two young sons, to avoid being shipped out.

ABC offered him $1,000 a day to "babysit" the London bureau when the other correspondents were away. Even so, he would often appear on Good Morning America and Nightline.

But when he was later asked to go to Afghanistan, "I said no, that's not part of my deal. I didn't surrender all those perks in order to go to Afghanistan. They said, yeah, but there's a little bit of unhappiness in New York about it.

"And then in the run-up to the Iraq war, they asked me would I go to Iraq? And I said that's not why I am in the contract situation I'm in."

Eventually he was replaced by a reporter who would go.

Gizbert argues that was the network's way of signalling to all correspondents that it was Baghdad or busted: "If you're sitting there watching ABC News and you see Diane Sawyer or Charlie Gibson throwing to some correspondent in Baghdad, you really should ask, does that person want to be there? Or is it because they want their contract to be renewed?"

One doesn't get ABC's side of the story in all this.

Zerbisias also recalled a similar fight by Arthur "Scud Stud" Kent against NBC when he refused a highly dangerous assignment to the civil war in Bosnia. He won a settlement in 1992.

I wonder if this non-right to refuse war zone assignments is restricted to the AmNets. But frankly, if one has done their time in war zones and they just don't feel lucky any more, the reporter shouldn't be forced to go back.

But perhaps executive types don't view those cases with any degree of sentimentality.