Journalists face mounting obstacles and threats to their work

Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned today's blast outside a hotel housing the Baghdad bureau of the televison network NBC and called for an investigation into the bombing, the first involving a US news organisation's base in Iraq. The organisation also voiced deep concern about the call to order issued by the transitional Iraqi Governing Council in the form of a series of instructions to news media operating in the country. The council decreed the new rules on 23 September at the same time as it sanctioned the Arabic TV stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. The council appears to be opting for a threatening and repressive approach to the news media, allowing them only "conditional freedom," Reporters Without Borders said. The new instructions add little to the decree issued in June by the US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, banning "incitement to violence." They use extremely vague terms such as "inciting disorder" that could apply to almost anything. Furthermore, they do not specify the punishments for violators or whether there is any possibility of appeal. Without endorsing the editorial line being followed by some news media in Iraq, Reporters Without Borders can only condemn the council's desire to restrict and control news coverage. This will not solve the problem of the terrorist attacks whose victims include Iraqi authorities, Americans and the civilian population. The news media should obviously be professional and responsible in their reporting of the news and there are often limits which journalists choose not exceed spontaneously and because they are indicated in international codes of conduct such as the Munich Charter. It is furthermore unacceptable that significant and draconian restrictions should be decided by a government rather than a professional ethics commission or a press council chosen by the news media themselves and consisting of news media representatives. Reporters Without Borders advises against suspending news media, closing news bureaux or expelling journalists, as this would be contrary to the promises made to the Iraqi population to respect basic freedoms, which include press freedom. Journalists are all the more aware of the security problems in Iraq after today's bombing outside the Al-Aike Hotel in Baghdad in which journalists were for the first time among the victims of such an attack. The blast killed a hotel employee and injured two others, including NBC soundman David Moodie, who sustained a minor hand injury. NBC's staff have been evacuated from the hotel. NBC correspondent Jim Avila said there was nothing outside the hotel to indicate there was an US television network bureau inside. NBC had not received any threat, either. It was too soon to say if the US journalists were deliberately targeted, but residents in the neighbourhood said it was no secret that Americans and journalists were staying in the hotel.