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Iraq media booming, yet still in sectarian grip
Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:51pm EDT
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By Missy Ryan and Khalid al-Ansary
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A boom in local media since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 has given Iraqis a choice between some 200 print outlets, 60 radio stations and 30 TV channels in Arabic, Turkmen, Syriac and two Kurdish dialects.
Yet most media outlets remain dominated by sectarian and party patrons who use them for their own ends, and have yet to become commercially sustainable enterprises let alone watchdogs keeping government under scrutiny, the favored Western model.
"The media is part of Iraq's new democratic environment, and it carries the same traits and the same flaws," said Abdulzahraa Zaki, a senior editor at al-Mada, an independent newspaper.
Six years ago, Iraqis opening the morning newspaper found Saddam Hussein's face splashed across the front page day after day, and TV channels offered little more than the martial leader's interminable speeches.
Today, newsstands hawk dozens of papers and the airwaves are packed with channels. After the fall of Saddam's controlling regime and as security improves after years of sectarian and insurgent bloodshed, journalists are able to report more freely.
But reporters are still constrained by a system where most media outlets are at least partly funded by powerful political parties that set their editorial tone and decide what to cover.
"The real problem here is that all sides will be practicing self-censorship on issues relating to their own direct interests," said Ammar al-Shahbander, who heads the Baghdad office of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
Take al-Furat, a channel backed by the powerful Shi'ite religious party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), as an example. In the run-up to recent local elections, party officials got hours of air time to promote their messages.
Such channels play up stories making political opponents look weak and play down their bosses' own mistakes.
Ali Khasbak, editor of a daily newspaper owned by Iraq's former interim prime minister, secular Shi'ite Iyad Allawi, said his journalists discuss perceived problems in Allawi's party -- but such views don't make it into print.
JOURNALISTS FOR RENT?
Iraq is just catching on to online reporting. Many Iraqi newspapers have Web sites, but internet usage is still low, with 275,000 users and 15,000 subscribers in a nation of 28 million in 2007, according to one recent U.S. report.
Young men who crowd internet cafes mostly do so to chat or find dates. Local blogs that do exist, such as Shalash al-Iraqi (http://shalashaliraqi.blogspot.com/2006/06/blog-post.html) on life, security and politics, are not widely read.
Embracing advertising as an alternative to party funding, which will be key for independent papers, has been hindered by the moribund state of Iraq's economy outside the oil sector.
But because party patronage ebbs and flows according to the political calendar, Shahbander said media must wean themselves from this dependency before they can embrace a sustainable business model -- and become a robust check on power. Continued...
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