Posted on 01/12/2004 6:59:29 PM PST by nickcarraway
THE red banner headline reads like something out of the National Enquirer.
"Saddam married 18-year-old girl in spider hole," it screams. Details in the next edition, says a tiny paragraph below. Such are the tactics used to sell newspapers in Iraq.
Since Saddam Hussein's fall, Iraq's press has exploded into a frenzy of free, fearless and frequently inaccurate journalism that can put the worst of the world's tabloid press to shame.
The unlikely story of the former dictator's cramped nuptials may be harmless, but other stories have a sinister edge, from accounts of the immoral behaviour of the infidel occupiers to warnings of Zionist forces attempting to take over Iraq.
The nominally independent Alitijahalakhar (The Other Side) carried a full-page photograph taken by the US soldiers dragging a dazed-looking Hussein out of his hiding place. "We told you that Saddam was drugged before his arrest," the headline trumpeted. "This picture proves it."
While a handful of papers pride themselves on serious reporting, most of the 100 or so publications on Baghdad's news stands are the products of different political and religious groups seeking to promote their own agendas.
Unsubstantiated stories of US misconduct, such as the alleged rape of two girls by Marines, led to a ban from the coalition on anything deemed an incitement to violence.
Al-Mustekela (The Independent) fell foul of the new restrictions when it published a cleric's fatwa urging Iraqis to kill "spies and betrayers". US troops raided the newspaper's offices and arrested the editor.
But the Iraqi press nonetheless remains one of the Middle East's freest - if not always the most responsible.
However, the latter is set to change with the establishment of Iraq's first Press Council, a five-person international team charged with organising broadcast and print media watchdogs.
The coalition has asked the team to establish a regulatory framework in time for free elections scheduled for mid-2005. The British Press Complaints Commission is the role model.
"Iraqi newspapers have suddenly acquired more freedom than they could ever have imagined in their wildest dreams," British member Dieter Lorraine, a former Royal Marine commando, said yesterday.
"It is essential that in the run-up to free and fair elections the press operates in a responsible way, through voluntary self-regulation, with the agreement of the Iraqis."
Under Hussein, newspapers that upset the Baathist regime were shut down and the editors tortured, executed or removed.
They're obviously not afraid he'll ever be released. No Iraqi paper would have written such a story nine months ago.
Wouldn't it be nice if that could happen in the good old USA?
How very accurate and insightful of an observation.
--Slip
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