 |
| High risk: Fayrouz Hatem, director of Al-Hurriya, lives in the station's offices. Sam Dagher |
Iraqi media braves assault from all sides
Reporters there say they face a growing threat from feuding political factions.
from the December 20, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 2
Page 1 | 2
Ms. Hatem says she believes the whole episode may have been instigated by someone within the government or close to the government who was displeased with the channel's programming. Before his detention, Haseeb was the cameraman for Al-Makshouf, or Exposed, which covers citizen grievances with the government.
"The biggest threat for Iraqi journalists these days are the feuding political parties," says Hatem, who moved back to Iraq from Sweden more than a year ago. Like dozens of other employees, she lives at the station. The channel has had three of its reporters killed since its inception in 2004.
"I went home two months ago and my neighbors told me it would be best not to come back because there are militiamen that think my line of work is immoral," says Al-Hurriya news presenter Marwa Ahmed.
Faeq al-Oqabi also lives at Al-Hurriya. For the past month Mr. Oqabi, who survived three assassination attempts and almost had his son kidnapped, has been sleeping in a room that doubles as his office in preparation for the relaunch of his controversial show, "Let's Talk," a call-in program that is highly critical of the government.
He left his old employer, the state-funded Iraqiya television, because he says it wanted to censor his show due to pressure from the government. "You face death from every direction the moment you raise your voice," he says.
The precautions these journalists exercise are understandable. Last Friday Ali al-Moussawi, who worked for Alive in Baghdad, a US-supported and Internet-based video reports project about the lives of Iraqis, was shot 31 times at his home in the capital's Sadr City district.
On Tuesday, a group of Iraqi journalists, some working for foreign news organizations, were accompanying police officials in Karbala to report on security measures in the city south of Baghdad when they were brutally beaten up by guards in the passing convoy of an Iraqi political leader.
But there appear to be slivers of hope, too. In the semiautonomous Kurdish north, where journalists have been harassed or imprisoned for what they write or say, regional President Massoud Barzani promised to reject a bill being considered by the region's parliament to regulate reporters' topics. In October, a group of reporters started working on their own code of conduct, with help from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Karim Hamadi, a prominent Baghdad journalist, says he's hopeful the press will find its bearings one day.
"We are on the path to having a professional media. Yes, there are a lot of pressures, but our experience is nascent and it's unfair to compare us to others," he says.
1 | Page 2
RSS feed
