Freed Iraqis enjoy a free press

BAGHDAD — A vendor on one street in the capital shouts out news he would have been arrested for trumpeting just weeks ago: “Read all about Saddam’s double.” A woman skids her car to a stop and asks for a copy of Assaah, a newspaper published in Iraq without government supervision.

Iraqis are enjoying press freedoms they haven’t seen in the eight decades since the nation’s establishment by British colonialists.

During the last part of Saddam Hussein’s 23-year presidency, no foreign newspapers were allowed into Iraq. Satellite dishes were banned, and cable television was prohibitively expensive. The sole windows to the outside world were radio stations such as the British Broadcasting Corp., Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo and the U.S. government’s Radio Sawa.

After the regime was overthrown in early April, a throng of freewheeling newspapers, radio and television stations sprang up to replace the turgid, sycophantic press under Saddam.

Kurdish and Arab, left and right, even two separate coalition-run radio stations, all are part of the boom.

Iraqis suddenly can choose from more than a dozen newspapers, compared with five state-controlled dailies of the past. People can buy satellite dishes and watch the channels of their choice, or listen to local radio stations denouncing Saddam as a corrupt and ruthless despot.

“The dictator has gone, and with him his corrupt system,” an editorial in Assaah stated.

In the days immediately after the dictatorship’s collapse, the country was left without any newspapers. State-run television and radio stations went off the air.

The vacuum was filled quickly by papers published by anti-Saddam groups in northern Iraq’s Kurdish areas, such as al-Itihad (“Union”) and Nidaa al-Mustaqbal (“Call of the Future”), which made their way to Baghdad. The London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat became the first foreign daily to be sold in the country in decades on April 17.

Within days, new newspapers began appearing on the streets. Three independent radio stations and several local television stations went on the air.

Still, some journalists say they are not sure whether the press scene is a reflection of newly found freedoms or a just chaotic post-dictatorial free-for-all.

“It is still too early to speak about the freedom of the press,” said Ali Abdel-Amir, senior editor of Nidaa al-Mustaqbal, a newspaper of the Iraqi National Accord, a longtime umbrella organization for Iraqi opposition groups.

“There is anarchy now,” Mr. Abdel-Amir said. “Many of these people working in the press are not professional or objective.”

Among the first new papers to start publishing in Baghdad was the London-based Al-Zaman, owned by Saad al-Bazaz, former editor in chief of the state-owned daily Al-Jumhuriya who defected a decade ago.

Story Continues →