The Iraqi media three months after the war : A new but fragile freedom

A wind of freedom has gusted through the Iraqi media for the past three months. For nearly 30 years, it was assigned the single task of glorifying the regime and its leader, President Saddam Hussein. Today, newspapers are springing up in Baghdad and all over the country. Radio and TV are not as prolific and lively, but genuine diversity and openness is now possible. But daily lawlessness and instability, the large amount of weaponry in people's hands, squabbles between political groups and the US and British occupation mean complete freedom is not guaranteed for journalists, who are practising self-censorship. Criticism and different opinions can now be voiced however. The future of the Iraqi media is largely in the hands of the US-British Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and, to some extent, the Iraqi Transitional Governing Council appointed on 13 July. Iraqis are hungry for news The people of Iraq are very keen on getting news from everywhere to judge by the profusion of TV satellite receiver dishes and cybercafés. Baghdad has about 20 cybercafés providing unrestricted access to the Internet through service providers (ISPs) in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan). An hour online costs about two US dollars, which few Iraqis can afford. But the cybercafés, many run by Kurds, are still crowded and users spend a lot of time looking at Arab newspaper sites and those of international and humanitarian organisations. One cybercafé owner said his customers were looking for the reliable information they had been deprived of for three decades. One sign that times have changed are the partitions that help prevent others seeing what a customer is doing online. Under Saddam Hussein, agents of the ruling Baath Party or the secret police (the Mukhabarat) would be looking over your shoulder to see you were not calling up forbidden sites such as private e-mail services like Hotmail or Yahoo. The country's only ISP in those days was the government-controlled Uruklink. The countless shops selling TV satellite dishes are another sign of people's desire to open up to the world and get news and information. "They prefer to spend a bit less on food rather than not have a satellite dish," said one shopkeeper in Baghdad's Karradeh Karej Street, where business is booming for him and dozens of others selling receiver dishes. "Even shoemakers are selling them," said one. They cost between $150 and $220, about the same as the fine you would get in Saddam's time, when they were illegal. If the police found one at the bottom of your garden or hidden in a cardboard box on the roof, it would be immediately seized and if you were caught out a second time, you risked up to a year in prison. When the regime was particularly worried about foreign influences, helicopter patrols would go looking for the dishes. In November 2002, when the threat of a US invasion was growing, the authorities reiterated that they were banned. Iraqis want both entertainment and news, said one vendor, and are big fans of foreign all-news stations as well as Arab stations such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabyia and LBC-Al Hayat. Newspapers flourish in Baghdad Iraqis are clearly keen on their new-found freedom of expression. The walls of the capital are covered with graffiti and political slogans, most of them demanding that American soldiers leave the country quickly. In Fardus Square, on the base of the demolished statue of Saddam that a US tank helped to pull down in a famous TV picture, someone has written the words "All done, go home." The huge number of new publications - at least 85 since 1 May - shows how frustrated people were by not being able to speak out and having to put up with the regime's relentless propaganda since 1979. There are also many tabloid papers and women's, sports and cultural magazines. Taxes on imported newsprint (from China, Brazil and elsewhere) for Baghdad's many private printing works have been suspended until 1 January next year by the CPA, thus reducing publication costs. Advertising revenue is also quite healthy, several newspapers say. All this helps the media to proliferate, especially as many journalists are ready-trained (in the 1970s and 1980s) and there is a solid written-press tradition in the country. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Iraqi press matched the abundant media in Egypt and Lebanon. Some papers have already come and gone and others will not last long. New ones seem to spring up all the time. Half of them say they are dailies but in fact only about a dozen manage to publish every day. The other half are weeklies, some appearing irregularly. Most of the media are critical of the American occupiers in varying degrees, but all observe limits of what they think is acceptable to US officials. A politicised press, but not all of it Newspapers are sold at newsstands or by mobile street-vendors and cost between 250 and 1,000 dinars (between 25 US cents and a dollar). There are very many religious papers, along with sports (El-Nawles, Al-Malaab), economic and cultural ones and several sensationalist tabloids. The main political groups have set up or revived publications to spread their ideas. Al-Adala is the paper of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), headed by Mohamed Bakr Hakim, a Shiite leader who returned from exile in Iran. Al-Manar, founded in 1945 and later banned, has reappeared and is also very critical of the US-British occupiers. Al-Ittihad, organ of Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Taakhi (Brotherhood), of the Kurdish Democratic party of Massoud Barzani, are the two Arabic-language Kurdish papers distributed in Baghdad. Since 1991, they have enjoyed in Kurdistan a freedom unknown by the media in other parts of Iraq. They target a wide readership and seem fairly pro-American. They are well equipped, know the local situation well and can each bring out an eight-page paper. But the main paper, as well as the biggest in size and the most credible with Iraqis, is Azzaman (The Times), founded in London in 1996 by Saad el-Bazzaz, a former head of national TV under Saddam Hussein who fled the country in 1992 after the first Gulf War. The main editorial staff are still based in Britain, but the paper has a big network of correspondents in Iraq and has opened offices in Baghdad and other major towns and cities. The paper, which says it prints and sells 30,000 copies in Baghdad, sees itself as the country's only truly "pluralist" paper, giving a voice to all political opinions. It takes a nationalist line but generally favours the Americans and often prints photos of smiling US troops. Another opposition paper that existed before the war and has returned from exile is Al-Mutamar (Congress), which used to be published in Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan. Ishtar al-Yasseri is one of the very few young women newspaper editors. With her father, who heads the editorial board, she brings out the weekly Habezbouz, which calls itself "a general news publication that is satirical, independent and neither Western nor Eastern." She says circulation has already doubled, from 3,000 to 6,000 copies. The paper, named after a satirical Iraqi paper in the 1930s, makes fun of the daily problems of Iraqis and the US and British troops. One drawing by its cartoonist, 32-year-old Abdel Hassan, showed a woman wearing a chador, with an Arab satellite TV reporter holding a microphone to her and asking: "How are Iraqis doing?" She replies: "Everything's fine - we just need security, some food and Saddam." Another showed the US civilian administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, putting a box marked "democracy" in a freezer, with the caption: "It's far too hot in this country." Foreign publications in Baghdad are surprisingly few. The pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat costs a lot and is hard to find. Papers from the United Arab Emirates (such as Al-Ittihad) and Kuwait (Al-Qabas) are seen as pro-American and so are not much in demand. The Iraqi press also has a big credibility problem. Only the best-established papers, led by Azzaman, inspire real confidence. Iraqis still seem to trust the news they get from the satellite TV stations much more than news from their own journalists. Media set up by the Coalition forces are hardly more popular, notably Baghdad's main TV station, IMN, which people call "the American TV station." "Independent" media set up by the Coalition forces The Iraqi Media Network (IMN), founded in January this year, was headed until June by Robert Reilly, a former director of the US radio station Voice of America, and Mike Furlong, who worked for the US Defense Department on media matters after the war in Kosovo. In early June, US administrator Bremer issued an order (no.6) saying the IMN was an interim body to replace the Iraqi information ministry, which was dissolved in May. The preamble said the intent was to create "conditions to permit the Iraqi people to develop a free, independent, responsible and reliable media for the people of Iraq." IMN was given the premises and equipment of the old government media as well as several hundred journalists and other people who had worked for it. More than 5,000 information ministry officials were sacked. Entire departments had been churning out regime propaganda and collecting intelligence. IMN sees itself as "an interim body with the job of building new infrastructure, training journalists and laying the foundation of a public media policy," according to one of its top officials. IMN is also a media outlet, or a group of them. The same official said it was modelled on the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and the American PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and might one day be privatised. IMN currently includes a TV station, two radio stations and a newspaper, Al-Sabah (Morning). The IMN TV station broadcasts about six hours a day, mainly soap operas , Iraqi folk songs and football matches. These are interspersed with announcements by the Coalition authorities and international organisations such as UNICEF. The 10-minute news bulletin goes out at 1930 and is repeated a few hours later. Chief editor Georges Mansour, a once-exiled journalist who worked for Radio Free Iraq, Azzaman and Voice of Iraq (a radio station based in Saudi Arabia), says the bulletin is put together by about 20 reporters who do local reporting and get other news from the Internet. The programme is completely independent, he says. He does not mention the material produced in the United States and given to him by the Coalition authorities. In reality, the news bulletin is dominated by Bremer's statements and the doings of the CPA. Mansour stresses that he is building a TV station run "by Iraqis and for Iraqis." One newspaper has poked fun at the accents of the TV announcers, noting they had clearly spent more of their lives in Canada or Britain than in Iraq. Mansour vehemently disagrees with such criticism and says IMN journalists are all "genuine" Iraqis. "I've got the same accent I had when I left my country 28 years ago," he says. IMN has a virtual monopoly of non-satellite TV in Baghdad. The Arabic service of the Iranian station Al-Alam, which broadcasts from Iran, is the only foreign station that can be picked up in some places without a receiver dish. Iraqi Kurdistan has had several local stations and one satellite station since 1991. It will be a long time before Iraq as a whole has such TV diversity. Radio broadcasting in Baghdad is more diverse than TV. The IMN station set up by the Coalition forces is on the air round the clock on AM and eight hours a day on FM. Its studios, in the former Saddam Hussein Convention Center, is closely guarded by US troops. But the BBC, Radio Sawa and RMC-Moyen-Orient (RMC-MO) are the most listened-to stations. The BBC has only been broadcasting on FM in Baghdad for a short while and does not seem to have needed any official permission. RMC-MO had been broadcasting in the city on FM since 13 July on 93.5 frequency. Radio France International (RFI) is planning to begin soon on FM. Other privately-owned local or politically-oriented stations have sprung up in recent months but are small and hard to pick up. The newspaper Al-Sabah is installed in the old offices of Az-Zawra, the paper of the Iraqi Journalists' Union headed by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, who terrorised its staff. Al-Sabah editor Ismael Az-Zayer has worked on the daily Al-Hayat and is a member of the Iraqi journalists' forum. The paper's staff of about 80 includes journalists (a dozen of them women) who all worked in Iraq under Saddam. Az-Zayer is full of praise for what the journalists have achieved in such a short time. The old working methods have been abandoned and investigation is king, he says. "I only accepted funding from the Coalition provided they exerted no censorship or pressure. The paper will soon be financially independent." Al-Sabah only comes out two or three times a week at the moment. An IMN official confirmed there was no censorship but watered down Az-Zayer's remarks. "We pay their wages and pay for their cars," he said. "The paper belongs to the IMN." A new freedom threatened by lawlessness Things have changed dramatically since 9 April, when US forces seized control of Baghdad, but Iraqi journalists still do not feel entirely free to express themselves or handle news as they would like. Fear of political groups and the general lawlessness makes them watch what they write and say. They also refuse to talk about a "free media" in a country "under foreign occupation." Administrator Bremer's order no.7, at the end of June, bans and punishes incitement to violence against Coalition forces and incitement to ethnic or religious hatred. The order has only been applied twice, to close a radio station and a newspaper, but it hangs over the head of Iraqi journalists. Nabil Jassem is a young Iraqi journalist. The office of his newspaper, Al-Aswaq (The Markets), is just a room with bare walls with a huge ceiling fan, a desk and a computer. The paper, which says it prints 10,000 copies, manages to bring out two issues a week. Jassem has never known any other regime but Saddam Hussein's but he has firm ideas about freedom. "Before, being a journalist was like walking on coals. We've definitely got more freedom now, but not enough, because there are so many pressures on us." He mentions the fear of reprisals from political parties, including Saddam's Baath Party. Only the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) have been allowed to keep their militias, but journalists fear that when political parties read something they do not like, their supporters will come to attack the staff of the offending media. Some politicians accuse journalists of being saddamiye (wanting Saddam's return). The large amount of weaponry and lack of police discourage reporting in some places and about some taboo subjects (such as powerful tribes, women and religion). The sound-only messages thought to be from Saddam that have recently been broadcast by Arab satellite TV stations have also revived fear of the dictator, who is still very present in people's minds. The restrictions imposed by the US authorities also oblige Iraqi journalists to be cautious. Two shootings in July that killed journalists illustrate the continuing dangers of working in Iraq. Richard Wild, a freelance British cameraman working for the British network ITN, was killed in Baghdad on 6 July when he was shot in the neck while in a crowd of students in front of Baghdad University. The Kurdish-language KDP daily Khabat reported that the Mosul bureau chief of Kurdistan Satellite TV, Ahmad Karim, was killed on 2 July during an armed clash and that his assistant, Hoshyar Ahmad, was wounded. Monitoring the CPA's restrictions A recent article compared Administrator Bremer's attitude to Saddam's, saying he had the same "totalitarian" inclinations of not listening to people and issuing arbitrary decrees. But the article was anonymous - an example of how Iraqi journalists are being cautious and waiting to see how the US authorities interpret the broad term "incitement to violence." Bremer's order no. 7 in early June about "inimical media activity" bans incitement to violence against US-British forces and against ethnic and religious minorities and says the commander of the Coalition forces is the "media monitoring authority" who will "create and maintain a register of all private media organisations" and require them to seek permission to operate. The order allows Coalition troops to raid premises and cancel licences on nine grounds - among them inciting or potentially inciting violence against the CPA, inciting "racial, ethnic or religious hatred," promoting "civil disorder, rioting or damage to property," advocating support for the Baath Party, advocating "alterations to Iraq's borders by violent means" and putting out news that is "patently false and calculated to promote opposition to the CPA." Punishment includes closing down a media outlet, confiscation of its equipment and a prison sentence of up to a year to be imposed by the "relevant authorities." The media can appeal by writing to the Administrator. "We want a free media," a CPA spokesman said on 11 June, saying the order was not intended to curb freedom but to rein in violence and preserve security. Such a measure may seem necessary because of current political instability but it remains to be seen if the Coalition forces will interpret "incitement to violence" reasonably or excessively. In the absence of a legal system, the US army and the CPA have the authority to prosecute and punish the media. The CPA monitors, prosecutes and sometimes punishes offences committed against it. The appeal procedure is hardly credible, since it rules out any independent body and simply consists of sending a protest letter to the CPA. Two media outlets have been suspended so far under the order. The radio station Sawt Bagdad (Voice of Baghdad) was closed a month after it opened. It was close to Mohamed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, who had proclaimed himself ruler of Baghdad (soon removed by US officials) and encouraged people to rob the banks. The other suspension was of a Shiite newspaper in Najjaf. The Iraqi media announced on 16 June that the newspaper of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Liberation of Iraq, Sada Al-Umma (Voice of Umma), had also been shut down by the Coalition authorities. Criteria for registration and issue of broadcasting and publishing licences are very unclear. Many papers and radio and TV stations have been able to start up without licences but this may not be possible in the future. So the policy of the Coalition forces needs watching to see if there is any bias or banning of some kinds of media. The attitudes of Coalition soldiers must also be monitored closely. Since the end of the war, one of the most deadly for journalists (with 10 killed, at least 10 wounded and journalists Fred Nérac and Hussein Osman, of the British TV network ITN, missing since 22 March), hostility towards the press has been noticed. The Iranian public TV station Al-Alam protested on 11 June against the detention by US soldiers of two of its journalists for several hours after they had been filming in central Baghdad. Their film was confiscated. Other foreign reporters, photographers and cameramen have been obstructed covering such things as Iraqi demonstrations against the occupying forces. Iraqi police arrested reporter Abdel Azim Mohammed, of the satellite TV station Al-Jazeera, in Ramadi (west of Baghdad) on 17 and 18 July, along with another journalist and a cameraman, and held them for several hours, accusing them of "inciting violence." Conclusion The energetic growth of the written media in Iraq is very promising. After three decades of one-party (Baath) rule, there is now genuine diversity. Local news-gathering still needs to be more professional to increase media credibility with Iraqis but at least it is free of official propaganda. The US and British forces guide and monitor the editorial line of some media they fund, but they must allow the real diversity of the written press to extend to radio and TV. There seems to be no problem for the moment with assigning radio frequencies, but this needs to be watched whenever new broadcast media are set up. Like the rest of the population, Iraqi journalists need reassurance. They can only work freely, professionally and without self-censorship if there is a speedy return to order and security. Lack of communications equipment and the risks of travelling around the country mean they cannot always do this. Use of violence by political parties to settle their quarrels only increases this sense of insecurity. As well as these problems, the rudimentary legal system does not really protect Iraqi journalists. In fact, the CPA order about "inimical media activity" encourages self-censorship. Incitement to violence against Coalition forces or incitement to ethnic or religious hatred is not clearly defined and the Coalition military commander has the sole power to decide what it is. The appeals procedure is not credible and is very unlikely to lead to the reopening of a media outlet closed by the occupation authorities. So far there has been no over-zealous interpretation of order no.7, but the attitude of the Coalition forces needs to be carefully watched, especially if protests against their presence in the country increase or become more violent. Reporters Without Borders calls for work to begin very soon on drafting liberal and democratic media regulations and laws to fill the present void and replace the harsh legislation of Saddam Hussein's era. A press law was drawn up by about 70 Iraqi, Arab, US and European experts and discussed in early June at a conference in Athens backed by the US government. Former IMN chief Robert Reilly promised at the meeting that he would push through this document, but his sudden departure from his post shortly afterwards has raised fears that implementation will be delayed. A new conference is now urgently needed in Iraq itself of local experts and officials to discuss and adopt a new, clear and complete legal structure. The aims of IMN must be clarified because it can no longer remain a hybrid body that is both a media group and a temporary government ministry. Should it become a public media outlet, an information or communication ministry, a regulatory agency or a government media policy think-tank? Although only an interim body, its goals and powers need to be spelled out clearly - and probably redefined - as soon as possible.