Iraq’s News Media After Saddam: Liberation, Repression, and Future Prospects A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance By Sherry Ricchiardi March 10, 2011 The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), a project of the National Endowment for Democracy, aims to strengthen the support, raise the visibility, and improve the effectiveness of media assistance programs by providing information, building networks, conducting research, and highlighting the indispensable role independent media play in the creation and development of sustainable democracies around the world. An im- portant aspect of CIMA’s work is to research ways to attract additional U.S. private sector interest in and support for international media development. CIMA convenes working groups, discussions, and panels on a variety of topics in the field of media development and assistance. The center also issues reports and recommendations based on working group discussions and other investigations. These reports aim to provide policymakers, as well as donors and practitioners, with ideas for bolstering the effectiveness of media assistance. Marguerite H. Sullivan Senior Director Center for International Media Assistance National Endowment for Democracy 1025 F Street, N.W., 8th Floor Washington, D.C. 20004 Phone: (202) 378-9700 Fax: (202) 378-9407 Email: [email protected] URL: http://cima.ned.org About the Author Sherry Ricchiardi Sherry Ricchiardi, Ph.D., is a contributing writer for American Journalism Review (AJR), specializing in international issues, and a professor at the Indiana University School of Journalism. Since 2001, she has reported for AJR on media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, interviewing dozens of correspondents on the ground there. Ricchiardi has trained journalists in developing countries throughout the world, including CIMA Research Report: Iraq’s News MediaSaddam After News Report: Research CIMA Iraq’s Pakistan, Yemen, and former Soviet territories. Most recently, she worked with Turkish journalists in Istanbul to develop an ethics code for the country’s media in a program sponsored by the International Center for Journalists. She is on the advisory committee of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University and North Carolina University’s Irina Project, a Web-based resource on human trafficking. In 2003 and 2009, she won the National Press Club’s top award for press criticism. Ricchiardi has been a Fulbright scholar at Zagreb University in Croatia and serves on the peer review committee for the Fulbright Specialist Program. Before going into media development, she spent 14 years at the Des Moines Register as an investigative reporter and Sunday magazine writer. She later became city editor for the Columbia Missourian, a newspaper produced at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, her alma mater. During the war in the Balkans, Ricchiardi’s stories from the front lines appeared in several American publications, including the Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, USA Today, and AJR. Center for International Media Assistance 1 Table of Contents Preface 3 Executive Summary 4 Iraq’s Media Landscape 8 America’s Approach 16 Voices of Iraqi Journalists 21 The Impact of International Media Development: Key Players 30 Conclusion 37 Endnotes 40 CIMA Research Report: Iraq’s News MediaSaddam After News Report: Research CIMA Iraq’s 2 Center for International Media Assistance Preface The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) at the National Endowment for Democracy commissioned this study of the state of news media in Iraq as the United States draws down its military presence in that country. The report traces the initial blossoming of independent media in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein and the current challenges that exist. CIMA is grateful to Sherry Ricchiardi, a veteran journalist, journalism professor, and media consultant for her research and insights on this topic. CIMA Research Report: Iraq’s News MediaSaddam After News Report: Research CIMA Iraq’s We hope that this report will become an important reference for international media assistance. Marguerite H. Sullivan Senior Director Center for International Media Assistance Center for International Media Assistance 3 Executive Summary After the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, Iraq’s tightly controlled state-run media underwent a transformation on two fronts: one driven by the Americans who made establishing a free press a priority; the other by an Iraqi citizenry that for three decades had been cut off from the free marketplace of ideas under a tyrannical regime. Overnight, Iraq’s media landscape blossomed into one of the most diverse and unfettered press environments in the Middle East. Privately owned news outlets grew from zero to more than 200 in a rush to meet demands for uncensored information. And despite formidable chaos over press freedom, Iraqi citizens suddenly had access to a varied menu of information unimaginable under Saddam Hussein. Satellite dishes, banned under the Baathists, flew off the shelves. Iraqis, once limited to government- Overnight, Iraq’s media run broadcasting and five newspapers, suddenly had landscape blossomed access to a smorgasbord of news from CNN and into one of the most Qatar-based al-Jazeera to dozens of publications and television channels springing up in their hometowns. diverse and unfettered press environments Iraqi journalists who defected during the Baathist in the Middle East. era returned. Saad al-Bazzaz, former head of state television and editor of a leading newspaper under the old regime, fled in 1992 and ran a publishing business in Great Britain catering to exiled Iraqis. Soon after the invasion, he moved his operation to Baghdad. Al-Bazzaz told London’s Independent, “We can’t train staff fast enough … People are desperate here for a neutral free press after 30 years of a totalitarian state.” 1 This euphoria over a “neutral free press” was short-lived. The reality on the ground today is a far cry from what Pentagon planners envisioned for Iraq’s CIMA Research Report: Iraq’s News MediaSaddam After News Report: Research CIMA Iraq’s reconstituted press system. Despite massive infusions of cash from the U.S. government for media development–more than a half billion dollars by most estimates–the future of the country’s media does not look promising on several fronts. Many of Iraq’s media outlets have become mouthpieces for ethno-political factions with the potential to inflame sectarian divisions that have led the country to the brink of civil war. In his groundbreaking study on Iraq’s press system, Middle East scholar Ibrahim al-Marashi warned that “ethno-sectarian ‘media empires’” were providing the psychological groundwork for bitter divisiveness and conflict and needed to be addressed for the sake of the country’s stability. 2 Any escalation of violence would be bad news for journalists who already work in a climate of terror and impunity. A record number of media professionals, the majority of them Iraqis, were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2008, making it then the world’s deadliest spot for the press. 4 Center for International Media Assistance Those who target journalists have little reason to worry. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, none of the 93 murders of journalists that have occurred In Iraq over the last 10 years has been solved. Iraq’s press corps has faced setbacks on other fronts. The Iraqi government has employed laws from Saddam Hussein’s era to muzzle media as well as some put on the books by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) during the occupation. The Iraqi Media Network (IMN) and Communications Media Commission (CMC), part of the CPA’s makeover of Iraq’s press system, were turned over to the government years ago. Both were designed to foster free expression and provide a multiplicity of views. It has not always turned out that way. The CMC has used its regulatory powers to shutter media operations and restrict news coverage. CIMA Research Report: Iraq’s News MediaSaddam After News Report: Research CIMA Iraq’s National Public Radio’s Deborah Amos, who covered Iraq for NPR, reported in June 2010 that Iraq’s state television, part of IMN, reflected the views of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government and had become known in Iraq as “Maliki TV.”3 Amos pointed out in a research paper she wrote while a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University that “Iraq’s state-run system failed to offer a neutral media space to all of the candidates and parties running in the election, despite a $500 million U.S. effort to make the Iraqiya a national public service system.”4 “It was the highest amount ever spent on media development anywhere,” she said in an interview. The judiciary also has been used to silence media. Iraqi news organizations continue to be plagued by lawsuits brought by the highest powers in government to intimidate and, in some cases, close them down. Journalists have been arrested, their equipment confiscated, and exorbitant fines leveled against them. All this has been occurring in a country ranked the fourth most corrupt in the world by Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index.5 February 2011 was a terrible month for Iraq’s journalists. As protests swept the country, Iraq’s security forces turned on them with a vengeance. Nalia, Kurdistan’s first independent TV station, had been filming unrest in Sulaymaniyah when 50 masked gunmen raided the studio, destroying equipment and setting the building ablaze. Three days later, men in uniforms, some wearing a skull-and-crossbones insignia on their helmets, stormed the Baghdad headquarters of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a prominent Iraqi press freedom group. Among materials stolen: archives that documented abuses against the media. A CPJ report released on February 25 told of military and security forces preventing cameras from entering Baghdad’s Tahrir Square where thousands of protesters had gathered and of dozens of journalists being assaulted, arrested and their film confiscated.