MEDIA: IRAQI DEMOCRACY?

ZMAG: Iraq's Press, by Robert Fisk

Under US Control, Press Freedom Falls Short in Iraq by Freedom of the
press is beginning to smell a little rotten in the new Iraq. A couple of
weeks ago, the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel received a phone call
from one of U.S. Proconsul Paul Bremer's flunkies at the presidential palace
compound. The station had to answer a series of questions in 24 hours,
its reporters were told.

"They insisted that if we didn't go to them, they'd come for us," one
of Al-Jazeera's reporters told The Independent. And come they did - to
drive the station's employees to the palace, where they were handed a sheet
of paper asking if they had been given advance notice of "terrorist
attacks" or had paid "terrorists" for information.

Al-Jazeera - along with its rival channel, Al-Arabiya - had already
been denounced by the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, currently led by the
convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi, and punished for allegedly
provocative programs by being banned from the council's press conferences for two
weeks.

Then the same council - obviously on Bremer's instructions - listed a
series of "do's" and "don'ts" for all the media, ranging from a
prohibition on inciting violence all the way to a ban on reporting on the rebirth
of the Baath Party or speeches by Saddam. As columnist Hassan Fattah
remarked about the council's punishment of the two Arab channels, "the council
and the interim council will be silent for two weeks, throughout much of
the Arab world, including Iraq itself. The resistance and the terrorists,
meanwhile, will still be able to say what they want. What a perfect
opportunity to pour their footage onto the airwaves and capture the
hearts and minds of Iraqis desperate for stability and some leadership."

"Wie will Amerika im Irak eine Demokratie errichten wenn sie nicht mal den Mut haben eine freie Presse zuzulassen? Moeglicherweise weil das ganze Demokratie gelaber nur Propaganda ist und die USA mit einer wirklichen Demokratie im Irak nicht leben k?nnen, weil diese Anti-Amerikanisch, Anti-Israelisch und Muslimisch waere."