Iraq media free-for-all
By Anthony Borden Posted Jan 1 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS/MURAD SEZER
More than 100 newspapers and an array of publications have been launched in Baghdad since May. Street vendors, such as Hasna Najem, can be found throughout the city.
It's boom time for media in Iraq, but in a violent post-war environment, only halting progress has been made toward establishing freedom of the press under U.S. occupation.
With the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, a bewildering array of publications has emerged, and the morning newspaper sellers seem to require an even greater stretch of pavement as they lay out the day's offerings on top of broad cloths on the main thoroughfares.
Arabic and Kurdish titles, major internationally-backed operations — from private groups based in London to the U.S. government — and small fly-by-night local publications all vie for the attention of a population that only a few months ago was limited in choice to the style and layout in which they would receive the same daily pronouncements from its leader.
At home, those who can spend $200 (about a year's wages) suddenly have access to the world of satellite TV programming, especially the popular Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya Arabic-language stations. Local radio stations have proliferated, and the boom has hardly peaked. U.S.-based initiatives — including a new Voice of America-style Middle East Television Network and a massive investment in Iraqi broadcasting — join a range of regional and Western investors in eyeing the country for its own market and as a way to reach the rest of the Middle East.
But amid this exciting media free-for-all, severe problems of content and intent persist. Journalists are impeded by the obstacles facing all Iraqis: miserable communications and transport, and security risks. Iraqi reporters are especially ham-strung by a lack of access to the American officials running the country — the very people they, as journalists, should be interviewing.
Bias in all emerging media
On the professional level, three concerns predominate. First, nearly all of the emerging media are biased. With no functioning economy, the bulk of new media is funded by the interests of a particular political party, faction or religious group. Commercial groups are seeking to establish a foothold in the market. And regional players with their own agendas have launched operations, transmitting from Iran.
Yet in a post-conflict environment, a highly partisan press can be destabilizing and provides a disjointed, ill-informed overall picture. This is especially the case where there is no central news provider, such as the BBC in Britain, or clear “paper of record”, as The New York Times.
The leading newspaper, Azzaman, maintains high production values and a fairly balanced tone — it is edited from England, with local input from a Baghdad office. Yet the paper is watched carefully as it is published by a controversial personality, Sa'ad al-Bazzaz, who was a senior member of the Ba'ath party until the mid-1990s and has made explicit references to his political ambitions.
Struggling to keep up, the Americans have launched a television station, a radio station and a newspaper. But the initiative, especially the Iraqi Media Network (IMN) television station, has been widely derided, in Iraq and on Capitol Hill, as crude and ineffectual, neither providing attractive programming nor serving as an effective means for the occupying authority to communicate with the population. Operated through the auspices of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), under the Defense Department, the project has burned up an estimated $40 million. The Pentagon commissioned San Diego defense contractor Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to carry out the project. It sought to attract accomplished Iraqi journalists and was launched with a senior ex-Voice of America executive and a long-time U.S. field hand with experience in Kosovo media. But the project has been undermined by a lack of independence, mismatched staffing assignments and bureaucracy. Even officials within the Defense Department have derided it as a disaster.
After constant criticism, several senior staffers have been replaced and a cosmetic re-launch has been prepared. A new $100-million contract, appropriated within the military side of the president's $87 billion Iraq and Afghan reconstruction request, is being tendered, with hopes among officials close to the project that a new contractor may unseat SAIC and bring media expertise to the venture.
Lack of political support
The second core concern is the level of support among political players in Iraq — including the CPA — for freedom of the press. Officially, it is central to a democratization process. But several indications raise a question over whether there is a true commitment to take the steps for such an environment to flourish.
From the Iraqi side, one of the early acts of the interim governing council was to ban the satellite stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya from its press conferences — accusing them of serving as propaganda stations for terrorists.
International free speech groups were alarmed, but officials were unapologetic. “We are not going to allow [media] offices in Baghdad to operate by inciting racial and religious hatred,” said governing council member Iyad Allawi, shortly before his colleague on the council was assasinted. “They've shown hooded men demanding that members of the council be killed.”
As for the Americans, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. “viceroy,” has also promulgated decrees giving him authority to discipline and has even shut down a few media he objected to, amid controversy.
There is no doubt that some regulation is required. Calling “Fire!” in the crowded theater that is Iraq is a real risk, and an understanding of media responsibilities and rights has to be enshrined.
The tactical problems are the absence of any regulatory and self-regulatory mechanisms. Until a transparent legal framework is established, any steps toward media accountability will be seen to be merely censorious.
But this is especially because at the core of the CPA, there is distrust of the press and an instinct for control. It could hardly be otherwise for what is an arm of the military. The CPA, the U.S. administration and many Con-gressional leaders fail to draw a clear distinction between public diplomacy — the term of art for government propaganda — and media. Jumbling them together, neither is done well. In particular, as long as U.S. officials refer to IMN as “our” station — and drop by the studio to suggest programming and expect it to communicate the U.S. “message” — it will never be “theirs,” that is, Iraqis'. Undermined by outside control, it will never be trusted as the fresh voice of a new country nor is it likely — whoever may win the $100-million contract — to serve as the central information resource that is vitally needed.
Absence of media professionals
The third major concern is the absence of media professionals. Iraq needs skilled reporters and editors, cameramen and presenters, managers and publishers. This is the most straightforward and perhaps longest-term problem. Journalists have no understanding of the requirements for fact-based reporting and lack the energy and initiative. A whole concept of Soviet-style and leadership-oriented journalism needs to be unlearned, an unrewarding and ultimately inefficient task.
The challenge here is to mobilize resources and develop a structure to bring together Iraqi and international partners to work throughout the country on a sustainable basis.
At the close of the war, with support from the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, an international not-for-profit, mobilized to launch sustained humanitarian reporting and training programs on the ground. IWPR assembled teams of international and Iraqi trainers and editors to hold workshops. The non-profit institute also engaged in publishing projects and disseminated humanitarian reporting within the local press and internationally online. The BBC World Service Trust initiated training and media development work in the south, but withdrew due to security concerns; Internews has sought to support the development of a legal framework for the media, while the International Federal of Journalists is preparing to support Iraqi journalists associations. Several organizations are partnering to assist in the formation of an Iraqi media institute, to serve as a central, independent and Iraqi-led source for media policy and training throughout the country.
Younger aspiring journalists or returnees from abroad have offered far more creativity and initiative, and are enthusiastic to develop fresh approaches.
“I hope to learn modern techniques in writing news stories and investigative reports,” says Abdel Karim al-Obaydi, a journalist with al-Mada newspaper and a participant in IWPR training workshops.
The difficulties facing Iraq are extreme. Yet Iraqis are confronting this huge challenge with considerable energy and initiative. They are highly educated and have shown an enduring desire to be informed. They may face towering obstacles, but if security could improve, and the politics could get out of the way, the possibility for a responsible press and sophisticated audience, is evident — a potential revolution in open media for the Middle East as a whole.