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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
IRAQ: Focus on media freedom
BAGHDAD, 4 February 2004 (IRIN) - Newspaper seller Abdel Mousin Khadim believes that Iraq now has a free press. But a recent decision to ban the Arabic satellite television station Al-Jazeera for one month from official conferences and government offices has raised concerns about the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council's (IGC) commitment to public debate.
Khadim has been selling newspapers for the past 17 years outside the Al-Zahawi coffee shop in the Mutinabi area of Baghdad, continuing a family tradition that started 70 years ago with his father. Over this time, he has witnessed political and social changes at home and abroad through the black and white print and television broadcasts of the former state-run media. But now in the post-Saddam Hussein environment, he thinks local newspapers had finally been given the freedom they deserve.
"There is freedom of the press now," Khadim told IRIN in Baghdad. "It is very good for our society." Prior to the war, Iraqis rarely - if ever - knew a free press. Under Saddam Hussein's 25-year reign, press freedoms were severely limited by party controlled state media, prohibiting independent newspapers, political dissent and free speech.
Khadim argued that in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq this has changed, pointing to the number of independent daily publications as proof. "I am selling around 15 different varieties of papers a day," Khadim said.
Now there are over a dozen daily newspapers and more than 100 publications circulating through the streets of Baghdad, Basra in the south and Mosul in the north - a fact unheard of before the war. The country's main newspapers had been run by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, who was feared and hated in Iraq by many citizens.
Of the papers Khadim sells, the daily Al-Sabah is the most popular among Iraqi patrons that come and go through the doors of the 105 year-old Al-Zahawi coffee shop, a place where writers and poets used to frequent regularly. "It is the favourite paper because it reports the situation as it is," he said. "I sell a lot papers to customers at the coffee shop." But it is not the only paper that finds a keen audience among Iraqis.
The country's daily and weekly newspapers have now come to represent the numerous political parties competing for power in Iraq. Others have connections to religious parties. The paper Al-Hawza focuses on the radical leader Moqtada Sadr and his party.
There are also passionate advocates of independent journalism, free speech and unbiased reporting now that there is the opportunity. "We have an independent and free paper," senior reporter Muthan Maji Tabachali told IRIN in his office at the Az-Zaman newspaper in Baghdad. "The paper is free to report on Iraqi problems."
Tabachali explained that the paper, with a Baghdad circulation of around 60,000, has over 20 reporters in the capital and at least one staff reporter in the 14 main Iraqi governorates. He said the paper concentrates on daily news and political developments. "Our newspaper strives for honesty, accuracy and trust," Tabachali said. "And there is no political line at the paper."
Tabachali argued that Az-Zaman also writes critical articles on the US-led coalition. "The coalition has made many mistakes," Tabachali said. "The behaviour of the US soldiers has created hatred for them." But he did admit to one limitation. "We don't write articles supporting attacks against coalition forces," he said.
Staff at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), a renound NGO working with local journalists and promoting press freedom, believe more focus needs to be placed on quality rather than quantity. "Iraq's press has sprung out of nowhere, and looks it," an editor and trainer at the IWPR, Steve Negus, told IRIN in Baghdad. "As of late October, Iraq boasted some 230 papers, many with very limited circulations. Most successful newspapers have some sort of party or other political affiliation."
"Because limited readerships and the lack of a mature advertising market makes a paper almost inevitably a money-losing proposition, most are extensions of a publisher's political aspirations," Negus explained. adding that this factor combined with the lack of an independent professional ethic of journalism, made for poor standards.
"Few papers have little aspiration to being a sober paper of record, and instead try and attract readers through sensationalism - sexed-up stories of Coalition abuses, lurid accounts of Saddam-era atrocities, or conspiracy theories," Negus notes.
He explained that on the other hand, because most publishers did not want to antagonise other publishers or politicians, there was little criticism of Iraqi domestic movements, little criticism (or even acknowledgement) of other newspapers, and little discussion of sensitive issues, particularly anything to do with sectarianism. "In consequence, the Iraqi press often looks as though each newspaper is in its own little bubble," Negus added.
Citing another example, he said that although most papers have reported on the Kurds' demand for "federalism," few have actually bothered to try and explain what this might mean. "This leaves Iraqis mostly ignorant of what's at stake in one of the key issues that will come up in the months ahead," Negus pointed out. "If asked what's missing from Iraqi civil society, the first thing that comes to my mind is 'debate.' That's the downside," he stressed.
On the bright side, he explained, there was a bewildering array of papers and little state attempts to control content. "Also, many educated young Iraqis are out there, anxious to try their hands at a new profession that seems to encapsulate all the new freedoms available after the fall of Saddam," he said. Negus added that the presence of wire agencies, NGOs, and other ways of teaching young Iraqis international standards of journalism would all contribute to the development of the Iraqi press.
"Also, once Iraq's economy improves, it will become a lot easier for genuinely independent papers to exist. I'd expect the quality of Iraqi journalism to improve by leaps and bounds within a few years," Negus asserted.
Another major cause of concern for the Iraqi media is a recent decision by the 25-member IGC which has raised fears that the country's political leadership is not fully committed to free speech and political debate.
The IGC banned the Qatar-based satellite channel, Al-Jazeera, for one month, according to a Governing Council press statement issued on 31 January. In a copy of the press release sent to IRIN, the Governing Council said the television network was banned from 28 January to 27 February from government offices and official press conferences because it had shown "disrespect to Iraq and its people and harmed prominent religious and national figures."
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the decision. "The IGC should welcome an open debate about Iraq's future, even if it includes views that the IGC finds objectionable or distasteful" said Executive Director of the CPJ, Ann Cooper, in an official statement. "By continuing to penalise media in Iraq, the IGC discredits its professed support of a free press."
The CPJ reported that Al-Jazeera Baghdad Bureau chief, Majid Khader, had received an Email from the governing council that pointed to a controversial 27 January episode on its popular talk show, "Opposite Direction," as the reason for the ban.
The show, titled "Israeli infiltration in Iraq," featured an Iraqi Communist Party spokesman and an IGC spokesman and included allegations of Israeli attempts to assert political influence in Iraq.
The Communist Party spokesman alleged, among other things, that some Governing Council members and Iraqi political figures have had relations with Israel or visited the country. He even alleged that Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had secretly visited Baghdad in December 2003.
Immediately following the show, Khader and Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said that journalists from the station were prevented from covering a 29 January press conference held by then IGC President Adnan Pachachi in Baghdad. It is unclear how strictly the ban will be enforced. Al-Jazeera carried an interview on 2 February with Dr Muhsin Abd-al-Hamid, current chairman of the IGC, following the ban.
This is not the first time Arab media networks have been banned from operating in Baghdad. In November 2003, the council prohibited the UAE-based satellite channel Al-Arabiyya from broadcasting in Iraq. It accused the station of incitement after it aired an audio tape purportedly of Saddam Hussein urging Iraqis to resist the US-led occupation of Iraq. The station was allowed to resume broadcasting in late January.
And in September 2003, the governing council barred reporters from both Al-Arabiyya and Al-Jazeera from covering official press conferences and from entering official buildings for two weeks for alleged incitement but did not give specific examples.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Human Rights
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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