Free Republic

Excerpt - A popular Iraqi state television presenter was kidnapped and shot dead along with her driver on Sunday in central Baghdad, close to her studio, colleagues and security officials said. Nakshin Hamid presented broadcasts destined for Iraq's Kurdish and Christian minorities on Al-Iraqiya television and had recently been forced to move house after receiving death threats, journalists at the network told AFP. "She was kidnapped this morning along with her colleague, the driver, as she came in to work. Less than 30 minutes later someone called us from her mobile and said: 'We killed her'," assistant news editor Abbas...

A civil servant has been charged under Britain's Official Secrets Act for allegedly leaking a government memo that a newspaper said Tuesday suggested that Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded President Bush not to bomb the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera. The Daily Mirror reported that Bush spoke of targeting Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar, when he met Blair at the White House on April 16, 2004. The Bush administration has regularly accused Al-Jazeera of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for anti-American sentiments.

A media watchdog organization has condemned the killing of an Iraqi television producer in northern Iraq. Khalid al-Attar, who worked for al-Iraqiya television, was abducted from a Mosul neighborhood by unidentified gunmen and was found shot to death July 1, the state-funded station said. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said it was the ninth killing of a journalist in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. The organization called on Iraqi and U.S. authorities to investigate, calling Mosul "Iraq's most dangerous city for the press after Baghdad." Al-Attar, 43, worked for a satirical program that poked fun of...

<p>When Arab-language TV station Al Jazeera broadcast anti-U.S. messages in the past, there was little the coalition could do to reach the average Iraqi with an alternative view.</p> <p>Satellite dishes were sprouting by the thousands on rooftops. Yet, the Pentagon-financed news channel lacked serious programming and access to a satellite to carry its signal.</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq - One of the chief U.S. weapons in the battle to win Iraqi hearts and minds is Al-Iraqiya - a Pentagon-funded TV station with an optimistic, pro-American slant. Announcers on Al-Iraqiya, which reaches 85 percent of Iraqis, decry the guerrillas attacking U.S. military and Iraqi civilian targets as "terrorists." Problem is, those Iraqis fortunate enough to have satellite dishes consider Al-Iraqiya stodgy and slow on breaking news. They prefer Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the flashy Gulf-based stations where anti-American fighters are branded "resisters."