Phil Taylor's papers
|
BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GLOBAL 'WAR' ON TERROR (GWOT) Years 1 and 2, ie 9/11-2003
The Iraqi media and the aftermath of war from ABC As journalists around the world train their collective gaze on the Middle East, questions are being raised about the role of media in a post-war Iraq. If this war is meant to bring democracy to a country ruled by a dictator, what will feature in the new Iraqi media landscape? Is the U.S. media going to be the model for Iraqis interested in full, free and fearless coverage of the issues that will define their new society? 
The Media Report, Thursday 20/3/2003 Mick O'Regan: Hello, and welcome to The Media Report. This week we're going to consider what sort of media might emerge in Iraq in the aftermath of war. Some exiled Iraqis want journalists who've worked for the government media to declare their guilt. So are we about to witness a witch-hunt? That's our story this week. As the troops prepare themselves to invade Iraq and plot the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime, other people are planning reconstruction. George Bush's rhetoric has made much of his desire to liberate Iraq, to introduce democracy, and to invigorate the ability of the Iraqi people to govern themselves. To this extent he's supported by many exiled Iraqis who are making their own plans, which include re-making the media in their homeland. For some, that means identifying journalists who've worked for Saddam Hussein, and dealing with them. Mohamed al-Jabiri: We are suggesting that all those working now for the media, they must come now and pronounce their guiltiness for their betraying the nation and working for a rotten regime. They will not be eligible to go and work in journalism with all their bad, dirty records. They have to go first and speak about their wrongness, what they committed in misleading the nation by false information and false media. Mick O'Regan: That's Mohamed al-Jabiri, an Iraqi exiled in Australia, who's on his way to Washington, D.C. to join a meeting of the US State Department's Transitional Justice Working Group, which is developing proposals for change in Iraq, and I'll speak to him in a moment. Currently in Iraq, the ruling Ba'ath Party controls the print and broadcast media. Opposition views aren't reported. And media content is determined by the government. In fact Saddam Hussein's son Uday, runs much of the media, including a youth TV channel and more than a dozen newspapers. Uday also heads up Iraq's National Press Union, which in fact named him Journalist of the Century for 'his innovative role, his efficient contribution in the service of Iraq's media family, and his defence of honest and committed free speech.' In order to place Iraq in the broader context of the Arab world, I spoke to Dr. Naomi Sakr, a visiting research Fellow at the University of Westminster in London, and the author of 'Satellite Realms', a detailed study of broadcasting in the Middle East. I asked her whether she could think of any Arab country that provided a model for independent media. Naomi Sakr: I'm hard-put to think of one, I have to say. You have in the Palestinian territories, there have been until last year, some very active, localised coverage of communities and a seriously developing media culture, but in April last year with Israeli incursion, a lot of those operations were very badly damaged and destroyed. Outside that area, in Lebanon we have a tradition of very active and dynamic media, but here again, there is a feeling that Syrian controls over aspects of Lebanon's everyday life, have impinged on what is possible and what is not possible in the media. And for example there was a television station closed down there permanently last year. And various types of programming that have been proposed within Lebanon have been not allowed to go ahead. A satellite station that wanted to do a talk show on Saudi Arabia, for example, had the plug pulled on its satellite links ahead of the program. I'm just giving examples, this is from Lebanon, where there is a tradition of active and diverse and, to some degree, pluralistic journalism, how in the last year or so things have been quite difficult. And if you look further afield there are much more obvious and heavy controls over press journalism and broadcasting. Mick O'Regan: So the norm throughout the region is effectively government control? Naomi Sakr: That's the norm, definitely in terrestrial broadcasting and also on the press. You have opposition, a political party's represented by newspapers. Those newspapers are still subject to heavy controls, because we have to remember that some of these countries still have emergency laws in place, which allow governments to by-pass constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, and impose the kind of censorship that would be associated with a wartime scenario, even though those countries are not exactly at war. So in the case of Egypt the emergency law that's been in place for about the last 30 years has just been renewed yet again for another three years. So although opposition newspapers are available and are published, what they are allowed to say and how they're allowed to operate is governed from within those emergency laws, which allow censorship. Mick O'Regan: Does that mean that populations throughout the Middle East have a very low expectation of the quality of information they're going to get from their media? Is there not the same demand that for example, people in Great Britain or Australia might expect from their media? Is that demand not present in the Middle East? Naomi Sakr: That demand is extremely present, and it's precisely because people have such a long experience of not being well-served; they are very acutely conscious of where their media are coming from, so in Britain for example, people might not be aware of their ownership structures and which political groups or vested interest might be behind aspects of media ownership, but in the Middle East that's the contrary. People may get the wrong end of the stick about who owns what and who's behind what, but they're acutely aware of their ultimate source of any piece of media information and so they will sample and test as many different sources as possible, to piece together a plausible interpretation and description of what's going on. Mick O'Regan: So for example, in any new media environment that would be constructed in Iraq after the war, the Iraqi people are very likely to be quite conscious of who was behind those moves and quite critical of what would be advanced in that media, depending on who owned and controlled it? Naomi Sakr: That's exactly the case. I mean if you take the example of Al Jazeera, the attempts to discredit Al Jazeera by those who are sometimes criticised in broadcasts, because the format of Al Jazeera is they have many talk shows, so they bring diverse opinion, so of course you get plenty of different types of criticism of different types of policies of different countries on Al Jazeera. All this criticism is taken personally by those who are the subjects of it, and their attempt has been to discredit Al Jazeera, and how do they do that? It's by implying that because Al Jazeera sometimes gives the microphone to spokespeople from Israel, the attempt is to discredit it saying it's a Zionist-backed operation, that it's financed by the CIA. So because that is a part of the way people think about that there is an ulterior motive behind any media operation, or at the same time it has been called "Osama TV", with the idea that because it has aired the videotape of Osama bin Laden, that somehow it has been financed and backed from al Qaeda networks. So the types of smear campaign, and the kinds of arguments that are used to discredit Al Jazeera for example, demonstrate the acute awareness of ordinary people in the Middle East to what the ulterior motives might be of any media operation. Mick O'Regan: How optimistic are you as someone who's studied the media in the region that we are likely to see the emergence of what we could regard as a democratic and independent media in Iraq, once peace returns to that country? Naomi Sakr: I would say that's something that can't be imposed from outside. If you take the example of Radio Sawa, which is the American Arabic language radio station recently created, with a popular approach to programming, to encourage Arabic speaking listeners to listen to the American version of events, because people know that that is American, there is much less interest in it than if it had been home grown. So I think in the case of media, people are not interested in models that have been introduced from outside; people want freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom to air their concerns, but it's almost counter-productive to have that kind of model imposed from outside. Mick O'Regan: So there's really a deep cynicism that would inform people? Naomi Sakr: People want information, they're very hungry for information, they will take all the different opportunities available to them to get that information, but ultimately, the model that is arrived at, that will suit any given country, has got to come from the people of that country, not from others, who can't possibly know all the ins and outs of local issues. Mick O'Regan: Dr Naomi Sakr, from the University of Westminster in London. She's the author of Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalisation and the Middle East. & Mick O'Regan: Now to a man with a plan. Mohamed al-Jabiri is an Iraqi exile who lives in Sydney, but as I mentioned, right now he's in Washington DC at a meeting of the US State Department's Transitional Justice Group looking at Iraq. One of the group's proposals involves setting up a body similar to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which facilitated the transition from apartheid to democracy. The group also wants new ownership structures for the Iraqi media. Mohamed al-Jabiri: What we suggested that we have one public ownership for the media that is available now, say just like the ABC if I may say. But then the others would be open to the public to come and lodge applications to establish a media just like what you do here in Australia. You will have a different airwaves of AM, FM, you have on the television and you want to own a television company, you go and establish a television company, a proprietary limited, and then you go and have your own wave in accordance with the permission you are given. But I think all television, all radio stations, all papers, they have to have a code of conduct and they have to maybe ethically attach to the nation's aspirations. You cannot have a paper that will go, say and disseminate information against Christianity or against Islam or against Judaism, or maybe try to put an outrage against such areas. So there is a limit to it, but of course that will be all at the hands of the media who are actually attached and accepted to the code of conduct. Mick O'Regan: Dr al-Jabiri, what about journalists and the culture of journalism in Iraq. In your model, is there a need to re-train journalists? Do you feel that the journalists who have worked in the period of Saddam Hussein's control of the media would work in a freer media environment? Mohamed al-Jabiri: We are suggesting that all those working now for the media, they must come now and pronounce their guiltiness for their betraying the nation and working for a rotten regime. They will not be eligible to go and work in journalism with all their bad, dirty records. They have to go first and speak about their wrongness, what they committed in misleading the nation by false information and false media. Mick O'Regan: So they would have to publicly declare their guilt? Mohamed al-Jabiri: Yes. And we are putting that model not only for the media, but for different sectors of life. Even for the security, even for the police, because this would be part of the reconciliation and establishing the new system of Iraq, because the new system will need all these people to come and work, but you cannot get them just to change one day from a puppet of Saddam Hussein, as stooges of the regime, fight the wishes of the people, make all the false accusations against the innocent and the Free Iraqi fighters, and then the second day he comes to represent these people's aspirations. This is a cheating, this is a betrayal. So we need actually to have them to stand, to confess their evil-ness, they've been part of it, otherwise they cannot come and participate in building the future of the country. Mick O'Regan: Do you not think though, that that would set up yet another degree of revenge and antagonism within Iraqi society if you're effectively having show trials, that's what it sounds like to me. Mohamed al-Jabiri: This is not a trial. Now if someone is working in a journalist's paper that is disseminating the false information and treating Saddam Hussein as another god. And then the second day, he comes to your paper and says, 'Well I want to work in your paper, OK?' How would you trust that person? How would you believe of his innocence and his ability to serve the country? And I think this has taken place in different countries of the world. In South Africa, in many countries. So we are taking the models of South Africa, of other countries. Mick O'Regan: So in that sense, the model that I understand that you're taking from South Africa would be like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Mohamed al-Jabiri: Yes. Mick O'Regan: So that in order to move forward as a society, past wrongs have to be acknowledged and owned. But one of the issues there, it was only in certain circumstances that people were specifically punished; are you proposing that journalists or editors who had worked for organisations that promoted Saddam Hussein or the regime should be punished for what they have done in the past? Mohamed al-Jabiri: We've discussed that matter very thoroughly and we had some people from South Africa, from Rwanda, from different places came over to us, and they talked to us about their experiences. It would be impossible to prosecute or to punish all the people, but still you don't allow every person to come and be a hero in the future new country of Iraq. If they are willingly and happily coming to serve, they must give a record of their past acts and to state what wrongs they did. It's not a punishment, but this to rectify the facts and to put the person in the right order and to show the people what mistakes did he commit. This is something I think that's very feasible to ask everybody to do that. Mick O'Regan: Do you have any sympathy for people who might have worked as journalists in media outlets in Iraq that basically to keep their jobs, wrote the articles that they wrote or avoided certain issues, would there be any sympathy directed towards them, do you think? Mohamed al-Jabiri: Well I'll tell you. This we did not reach a solution. We've been discussing this and I hope that our coming meeting will adopt a special criteria for the reconciliation and for the amnesty. Where do you go? How much are you going to allow people to start their new life in the new Iraq? How much reconciliation you are consenting to those people? Mick O'Regan: Journalists who were working for media outlets controlled by the government, I would imagine if they had decided not to write articles or had written articles contrary to the government, they might have put their own lives at risk under his regime, and I could understand that they might have had anxiety about that. And what I'm asking is people in that position who worked for those media outlets, are you saying that there would be no consideration of the threats that they might have exposed themselves to by resigning or refusing to write certain articles? Mohamed al-Jabiri: Well I'll tell you. In a country like Iraq, they don't recruit a person unless he is already committed to the regime of Saddam Hussein, because these people, they have to get a screening from the Intelligence, not only about themselves, about their families, their wives, their relatives, all over. So these people, they already been as a supporter for the regime of Saddam Hussein, when they stand, they stand wholeheartedly for the regime. If they can prove otherwise, of course they must enjoy amnesty, but if they cannot, then you count them on the side of Saddam Hussein and they're collaborators. Mick O'Regan: Dr Mohamed al-Jabiri, an advisor to the legal working group of Iraqi exiles meeting this week in Washington, D.C. & Mick O'Regan: If nothing else, the meeting in Washington does underscore just how seriously the Americans approach the issue of changing the media in Iraq. To get another perspective on this I spoke to David Mack. He's a former American diplomat who was based in Baghdad and later was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs in the State Department during the first Gulf War. He's now Vice President of the Washington-based Middle East Institute. David Mack: The first time I was in Iraq was a little bit unique; that was in the mid-'60s and I don't think it's as relevant as the second time in the late '70s, when Saddam Hussein was consolidating his power. And I surveyed the Iraqi media every morning as part of my job and particularly the print media. But also in the evenings I would always watch Iraqi television. It was heavily government-controlled, even those newspapers which ostensibly represented special interest groups, such as the Kurds. In fact the editorialists and the other managers of all of these media organisations were named by the government, and perhaps the non-government newspapers were a little livelier than the government newspapers, but they were no less controlled by the government. Mick O'Regan: Mr Mack, how important are changes to the Iraqi media in any plans for a post-war reconstructed Iraqi society? David Mack: This is one of the 16 areas in which the State Department has set up a working group on the future of media in Iraq, both government-owned media and private media. So they have clearly identified it as an area in which it will be very important to make serious changes, and it will be very important to do this rather early after any military action, so it would begin during a period of military occupation. It might not come to full fruition for some years. However we have some rather useful experience in this regard, since in Iraqi Kurdistan, where local authorities have essentially been running their own affairs since 1991, there has been a vast proliferation of news media, including many privately owned newspapers, a number of television stations and radio stations. I think now for a while there were over 100 newspapers, proved to be quite impractical of course, and now I think there's about 40. But there is a vibrant press in that area. We know that there are many, many highly trained Iraqi journalists and television technicians and so on, both inside Iraq but also many who have chosen to leave Iraq to go into exile and are particularly concentrated in the City of London, where there are two significant newspapers being run by Iraqis primarily for an émigré Iraqi audience. Mick O'Regan: Given that the rebuilding, so-called, of the Iraqi media would take place in the context of occupation following a war, is it naïve to think anything but that part of the reconstruction of the media will be part of the military project, and in that sense it's not going to be a free and fair media, it's actually going to be a media that dovetails into the military needs of the occupying force. David Mack: Well I think that's a fair commentary. However one of the primary objectives that President Bush has talked about is helping Iraq become a democratic society, and a free media is viewed as one of the essential building blocks for a democratic Iraq. Also I would emphasise that to whatever degree the Department of Defence and military officials exercise a heavy hand over the media, there are other factors at work in US government planning. They have set up for example, this working group of free Iraqi journalists both from émigré Iraqis and from Iraqi journalists who are working in Iraqi Kurdistan, and this is essentially a network of Iraqi specialists in this area who have been asked by the State Department to do some planning, and the State Department basically has given them free rein, they can do their own thinking obviously about what they think the appropriate media for a future Iraq would be, what kind of problems it will face, what kind of training is required, how it would be financed, what the mix would be between government media and private media, and so on. And this group has been working, and these things tend to develop a certain dynamic of their own, since the Administration is very keen not to at least appear as being ruling with a heavy hand. Mick O'Regan: Well I suppose, Mr Mack, that the key phrase that I took from that answer was the idea that they would do their own thinking. What I'm questioning I suppose is, how realistic is it that any media that emerges in a post-war Iraq is actually going to be able to cover a range of opinions that might exist in the region. Isn't it more likely that the focus of the media will be resolutely to oppose any vestiges of Saddam Hussein or any ideas in the region or in the country that might support Saddam Hussein. Are we likely to see a movement from sort of media control to another sort of media control? David Mack: I think that's a danger, but there will certainly be many media specialists who believe at least in the sort of more benign principles of the Ba'ath Party and they want to set up a newspaper that represents the views of Arab Socialists, for example. And I think that the general principles that this working group has talked about would certainly not preclude that. And the Iraqi Communist Party is definitely a part of the Iraqi political elite, they will certainly want to have a newspaper that represents their viewpoint. There's going to be a fair degree of pluralism among the groups that are going to be contending for political authority and influence in Iraq, and one of the things that they will typically want to do is to have their own newspapers or radio stations and television stations. Mick O'Regan: On this program, we've heard of a plan to put in place in Iraq a sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the sort that was instituted after the end of apartheid in South Africa, and one of the issues that's come up there is the notion that journalists who have worked for newspapers or media outlets during the Saddam Hussein period, would have to come forward and publicly acknowledge their guilt, even guilt by association in working for the tarnished or disreputable media outlets of the Hussein regime. In the State Department's approach, do you think that idea of a Truth and Reconciliation, a purge if you like, of journalists who've worked for the regime, is necessary? David Mack: I don't think it's necessary. I am aware that there is considerable sentiment of that kind expressed by some of the Iraqis who've participated in the working group on transitional justice and some of the other working groups. These are, after all, people who left Iraq because they felt politically persecuted, or at least have advanced this as their reasons for having left Iraq. But there are contending views. There are many Iraqis in exile I would say, somewhat more realistic, who say, 'Look, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people who, as part of having a career, became a member of the Ba'ath Party, were working for the regime simply because they had no choice.' It wasn't as if they were torturers or imprisoning people, so they shouldn't be subject to the same kind of criminal penalties, and they shouldn't be deprived of political rights in a future Iraq. Also it's quite noteworthy that President Bush I believe it was in his March 6th address, quite clearly when he was talking about the forces for Iraqi democracy, said that all Iraqi citizens should have an equal opportunity to participate in the governance of their country, and he passed up an opportunity to make a pitch for any special treatment for the organised Iraqi opposition groups. This doesn't mean that the Administration doesn't want to see those organised groups, who for the most part espoused democracy and human rights, doesn't want to see them involved in the process, but simply that the Administration hasn't accepted the wish of many of these groups that they would become an interim government or government-in-exile, or in some way be imposed upon the rest of the country, without having gone through the process of competing with other Iraqis in elections and so on. Mick O'Regan: David Mack, from the Washington-based Middle East Institute. & Mick O'Regan: And that's the program for this week. My thanks to producer, Caroline Fisher, and to Jim Ussher, our technical producer. Guests on this program: Dr Mohamed al-Jabiri Iraqi exile based in Sydney and advisor to the US State Department's Transitional Justice Working Group. Naomi Sakr Visiting Research Fellow, Westminister University, London and author of 'Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East.' David Mack Vice President of the Middle East Institute, Washington. Presenter & Executive Producer: Mick O'Regan Producer: Caroline Fisher |