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The
'Lebanonization' of the Iraqi Media: An Overview of Iraq's Television
Landscape
By
Paul Cochrane
The media landscape
in Iraq has undergone a radical transformation since state-run
Iraqi television abruptly went off air following the US-led
invasion in March 2003. With no state television and the ownership
of satellite dishes banned by the Baathist regime, Iraqis were,
quite literally, starved for information. As a result, satellite
dish sales skyrocketed in the months following the invasion,
leading to one f the highest penetration rates in the world
in just two years. From three national TV stations and 14 officially
sanctioned Arb channels (the latter only available to a select
few via card subscription in the two years before the war) many
Iraqis suddenly found themselves with access to over 300 satellite
channels and a handful of new Iraq-oriented networks. "These
people had nothing, and now they are overwhelmed with satellite
channels. It is a chance to get back to the real world,"
says Jean-Claude Boulos, head of Iraqi broadcaster Al Sumaria.
Today, the "real
world" of the country's splintered political scene is only
too well reflected in Iraq's 30-plus terrestrial and satellite
channels, the layput of which increasingly mirrors the country's
turbulant scene, with stations cropping up to represent every
sectarian and political trend.(1)
With Iraq's TV menu
growing increasingly sectarian, it is possible to draw a parallel
wit Lebanon's highly sectarianized hodgepodge of channels--linked
directly or loosely with political parties--which regularly
report sect-specific news.(2) It is therefore perhaps fitting
to speak of the "Lebanonozation" of Iraq'a media,(3)
what with dozens of channels backed by politcal parties, such
as the (Shiite) Islamic Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution
in Iraq's Al Furat TV and the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamist Party's
Baghdad TV.
However, that said,
Iraqi broadcasters have much more to contend with than sectarian
rivalries. The current security situation is so bad that channels
are spending up to 20 percent of their monthly budgets to protect
personnel, employees are regularly unable to show up at work,
and filming outside of studios has become hazardous and potentially
deadly. Despite the overwhelming post-Saddam boom, the future
is far from certain for media in Iraq.
External
Influences
Governments led the
way in establishing Iraq-orientated TV channels in the post-Saddam
Hussein era. One of the first channels to start broadcasting
with an Iraqi audience in mind was the Iranian government-backed,
Arabic-language satellite TV network Al Alam (The World), which
was launched during the invasion. The channel broadcasts throughout
the Middle East (bureaus in Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut) but
has given special focus to Iraq by hiring anchors and reporters
with an Iraqi accent. “The reason for this is very simple
actually, Iran is next door to Iraq,” says Faysal Abdel
Sater, director of public relations at Al Alam. Indeed, for
several months Al Alam was the only foreign TV channel Iraqis
without satellite could watch, thanks to the network’s
transmitters dotting the Iran-Iraq border.
One of Al Alam’s
stated objectives is to “end the long-held monopoly of
Western media in broadcasting news.” But alongside Al
Alam and Pan-Arab satellite news giants Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya,
Western powers were quick to replace one state broadcaster with
another in Iraq. As soon as Coalition Forces controlled Baghdad,
the US-funded Arabic language station Radio Sawa started broadcasting
in March 2003 along with voice of America Kurdish and Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Arabic station, known as Radio
Free Iraq.
In March 2003,
the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) created the Iraqi
Media Network (IMN), with the aim of establishing a public broadcaster
similar to that of the BBC and America’s PBS. The original
network contract (eventually totaling some eight contracts worth
$108.2 million) was awarded to the San Diego-based Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC) by the US Defense Contracting
Command to set up 24-hour news channel Al Iraqiya, a sports
channel, two FM radio stations and a national newspaper. SAIC
was replaced by US-based Harris Communications with a one-year,
$96 million contract in January 2004 that was later renewed
for six months.(4)
Al Iraqiya initially
struggled to gain credibility among Iraqis. It was regarded
as the voice of the occupying forces because of its close relations
with the CPA and a weekly address by US Administrator Paul Bremer.
Iraqi journalists and cameramen also complained that despite
the colossal amounts of money provided to contractors, little
was trickling down to them. Most were kept on pre-war salaries
of $120 a month rather than the $800 a month Western networks
offered or a $1,000 a month private stations were reportedly
paying reporters.(5)
But after initial
teething problems, Al Iraqiya started gaining ground, with 50
percent of Iraqis interviewed in a February 2004 poll by Oxford
Research International expressing confidence in the channel,
up 11 points from November 2003. Al Sumaria’s Boulos said
the now government-run Al Iraqiya (although still financed by
the US taxpayer) is the most-viewed terrestrial channel, largely
because it is broadcast terrestrially and available to 93 percent
of Iraqis. “Al Iraqiya is better now, showing more of
what is going on in Iraq,” says Hameed Alaa Hameed, a
network engineer from Baghdad.
However, the supposed
impartiality of US-linked media has once again come under scrutiny
following revelations in December 2005 that the Pentagon was
secretly feeding hundreds of positive news stories, written
by American military personnel and private contractors, to the
Iraqi press. US Army General George W. Casey was reported as
saying in March that the US military will continue to pay Iraqi
newspapers to publish pro-US articles, adding that an internal
review had concluded that no US laws or Pentagon guidelines
were being violated by the policy, which aims to counter what
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called “a campaign of
disinformation” by the Iraqi resistance.(6) Whether the
US military also is feeding stories to Iraqi TV networks is
not known, but with the freedom of print media unabashedly undermined
it would seem far from conspiratorial to hypothesize that this
is happening at some level in the broadcast media. “I
don’t know if they are being given stories, but maybe
some channels are getting footage, like Kurdish channels, as
they are with the Americans,” says Hameed.
Certainly, state broadcaster Al Iraqiya seems to be given more
privileged access by the Coalition forces than other channels
. During a joint US and Iraqi military operation on the northern
city of Tal Afar in late September 2005, Al Iraqiya was the
only non-American camera team allowed to accompany the troops,
according to Al Jazeera’s editor-in-chief Ahmed Al Sheikh.
The Iraqi Media Network's
Al Iraqiya was not the United States’ only attempt to
counteract the popularity of Pan-Arab news channels in Iraq,
or in the rest of the region for that matter. In February 2004
Alhurra (The Free One) was established, and shortly after, in
April, sister channel Alhurra Iraq began broadcasting. Alhurra
has had moderate success around the region, but reached into
only 15 percent of Iraqi households in June 2005, according
to Ipsos-Stat.
For the UK, Britain’s
BBC World Service Trust joined the fray fairly late, launching
Al Mirbad TV and radio in August 2005 in southern Iraq. According
to Abir Awad, a project developer for the World Service Trust,
the channel is to provide independent media in southern Iraq.
“The media in Iraq used to be very Baghdad centric so
we aimed at a regional audience,” she says. The World
Service Trust is an independent charity within the World Service
that has developed media in other war-torn countries such as
Kosovo and Afghanistan, although Al Mirbad is the Trust’s
biggest project to date. The British government’s Department
for International Development is providing Al Mirbad with $11.81
million for the next two years, after which the broadcaster
will seek funding from international donors and advertisers.
The Basra-based channel—“the station with a southern
vibe”—is managed by Iraqis and currently produces
four hours of original content a day. In addition to helping
establish channels, Western governments have also been working
to train Iraqi media workers. The BBC and USAID have both been
involved in training programs for Iraqi journalists on balance
and ethics.
TV Journalism
Turns Deadly
The invasion and
subsequent occupation of Iraq has resulted in the deadliest
conflict for the news media in recent history. At least 67 journalists
and 24 media support workers have been killed and 39 journalists
kidnapped since the invasion. Five of the kidnapped journalists—four
Iraqis and one Italian—were killed, and the others released.
Many journalists also have been wounded covering the conflict,
as well as harassed and imprisoned by the Coalition and Iraqi
authorities. The Iraqi Media Network, which includes national
broadcaster Al Iraqiya, has suffered the greatest losses, followed
by Dubai-based Al Arabiya, with nine journalists and six support
workers killed.(7)
“Everyday when I ask my guys to do a story it is a nightmare
for me because I am worried what will happen,” says Nabil
Al Khatib, executive editor at Al Arabiya, which has lost 11
staff.(8) (See Al Khatib's interview wih TBS in this issue)
Al Khatib believes the security situation is having a negative
impact on news reporting. “If we are talking about serious
coverage of an area, a troubled area like Iraq, you need to
be able to move freely and go to different areas and pass on
your impressions to the public. But to compile a decent, balanced
and accurate story is something that most of the time is not
doable. It is not impossible to work there but it takes time
and a lot of energy that is in contradiction with the nature
of news for a news channel.”
Among Al Khatib’s concerns with operating in Iraq is a
controversial issue that all news channels in Iraq grapple with—embedding
journalists with Coalition forces.
Al Khatib says he has two concerns with embedding correspondents,
firstly that the US military request correspondents to be attached
to a unit for a lengthy period, often weeks at a time, for security
reasons before military operations. Al Khatib says that the
channel cannot afford to have correspondents away on assignments
for essentially an unknown period. Furthermore, Al Khatib says
that with most assignments carried out by Iraqis, locals put
themselves at risk if they embed with Coalition forces. “If
he is seen with the Americans and comes back, it would be difficult
to explain to people that it was just an assignment. People
might be aggressive because he was embedded,” he explains.
Al Khatib’s concerns are not to be taken lightly. Of the
91 journalists and media workers killed in Iraq, 80 percent
are Iraqi and some 60 percent were targeted for assassination.(9)
“The second concern is that we are afraid of sending someone
to be embedded to only cover the American side and then we fail
to cover the insurgent side, to be balanced. For CNN or other
American networks they don’t care about being balanced
or not. We cannot do that and we won’t do that,”
he says.
Regulating or Restricting Broadcasters?
As if broadcasting in Iraq is not difficult enough, Iraq’s
interim Governing Council set up a Higher Media Commission in
the summer of 2003 to regulate and license the burgeoning TV
market. In the September of that year the commission barred
Pan-Arab news channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya from covering
the Governing Council’s activities for two weeks, claiming
the networks promoted political violence and the killing of
members of the council and the Coalition, and broadcast “terrorists
terrorizing Iraqis.”
By July 2004, the
Iraqi National Communications and Media Commission (INCMC) had
been established, laying down rules and editorial standards
for program content of television and radio broadcasters.
The commission, closely
modeled on the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and
the UK’s communications’ regulator OfCom, first
bared its teeth when it banned Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera for
a month in August 2004 for “incitement to hatred”
after broadcasting stories on the Iraqi resistance. Al Arabiya
was back on air after a month, but Al Jazeera has remained blacklisted
ever since. Al Jazeera’s editor in chief, Ahmed Al Sheikh,
believes the decision was politically motivated. “It was
a joint US-Iraqi decision. If they wanted to have reversed that
decision they could have,” he says.
Al Jazeera has experienced
such bans in the past in Iran, Jordan, Kuwait and Palestine,
but the Iraqi ban has particularly aggravated the channel. “I
think the people behind the closure are those who don’t
like the truth, no more, no less. They don’t like Al Jazeera,”
says Al Jazeera presenter and producer Mohammed Al Bouniry.
“By shutting down Al Jazeera they will have no problem
to shut others down.”
However, no other
channel has been banned in Iraq and other broadcasters do not
share the same grievances as Al Jazeera. Al Diyar’s Al
Yasiri is supportive of the commission: “We don’t
have any form of censorship. At this point in time, Iraq is
the freest country in the Arab world for the media.”
But Star TV Network’s
Saad Al Saraf believes the commission is not living up to its
potential. “It could be bigger and wider, and just revolves
around one person (Siyamend Othman). It has not successfully
tackled issues in media bias, such as during the elections,”
he says. Indeed, there seems to be a sort of "look the
other way" approach to enforcing the commission’s
rules, such as the ban on "spreading sectarian, racial
and religious sedition and strife."
Broadcasting Sectarian Strife?
A cursory glance at the backing and orientation of many channels
reveals the extent to which sectarian issues are driving broadcasting,
which can only exacerbate sectarian proclivities that are increasingly
apparent in Iraq.
Al Salam TV relies on funding from Shiite cleric Muqtada Al
Sadr, Ghadeer TV on the Higher Council of the Islamic Revolution,
Al Masar TV on the Islamic Da'awa Party, and Ahlul Bayt TV (The
House of the Prophet Muhammad) on the patronage of Shiite cleric
Ayatollah Hadi Al Moderassi. Baghdadia TV is considered a moderate
Sunni channel and Baghdad TV, run by the Iraqi Islamist Party,
is known as "Baathist TV" among Shiites who criticize
its pro-Sunni agenda. Afaq TV (Horizons) shows video footage
in support of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party and Muqtada Al Sadr.
Babil TV reportedly
offers programming in support of the Sunni Iraqi Front for National
Dialogue, and Biladi TV runs programs in support of the United
Iraqi Alliance.
Al Furat (The Euphrates)
is reportedly backed by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution
in Iraq (SCIRI) and supported the Unified Iraqi Coalition during
the elections, which has the backing of Shiite cleric Grand
Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani. The channel's director general, Arshad
Tawfiq, was a former Iraqi ambassador to Spain and a former
Baath Party official, and is now a member of the Supreme Council
for National Salvation. The station opposes the presence of
the Coalition forces in Iraq, and refers to Iraqis killed by
Coalition troops as “martyrs.”
As desired above.
the Coalition-created Al Iraqiya channel initially was lambasted
as a pro-American mouthpiece, but since it was turned over to
the Iraqi government is widely viewed as a sectarian, Shiite
channel.
Al Bazzaz’s
Al Sharqiya is considered a more toned channel, although overt
support was shown for former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in the
recent elections and some view the channel as pro-Sunni. An
Iraqi who worked for Al Sharqiyah in Dubai, who did not wish
to disclose his name, told TBS that many of the channel’s
employees do not like Shiites, a bias that is reflected in the
channel’s employment policies. “They kicked me out
when they knew I was Shia. It is a pro-Sunni channel,”
he says.
The channel was mockingly
dubbed “Al Baathiya” upon launch because of Al Bazzaz’s
personal history as the head of the Baath regime’s national
news agency until 1992. Al Bazzaz is also rumored to have political
ambitions and was alleged to have received millions of dollars
from the Saudi government to launch the Iraqi Azzaman
newspaper in a British high court hearing last year.(10)
Ethnic minorities also have a political media presence. Ashur
TV, which represents the Assyrian Democratic Movement, receives
50 percent of its funding from the party and the rest from supporters
around the world. The Iraqi Turkoman Front funds Turkomaneli
TV. Baghdad’s Shafak TV is backed by the Kurdish authorities,
Kurdistan TV by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and ATB TV is
linked to the Kurdistan Communist Party. The Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK), the party of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani,
operates Al Hurriyah TV and PUK TV. KurdSat TV reportedly supports
the PUK.
The extent to which
sectarianism is affecting Iraq’s media content, particularly
news, was evident following the February 22 bombing of a Shiite
shrine in Samarra. Sunni-orientated channels such as the Iraqi
Islamic Party’s Baghdad TV, which has no correspondents
in either of the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, focused
on Sunnis attacked in retaliation for the bombing, while Shiite-run
channels Al Furat and Al Iraqiya devoted coverage to the damage
to the shrine and the plight of Shiites under Saddam Hussein’s
regime. Al Furat reportedly aired slogans telling Shiites to
stand up for their rights.(11)
Even Al Jazeera has come under fire from Iraq’s sectarianism,
with Shiites taking to the streets in December 2005 to protest
against the channel for broadcasting a remark, made by a guest
on a talk show, arguing that religious authority Ayatollah Sistani
should stay out of politics. BBC analyst Magdi Abdelhadi believes
the demonstrations were a "testimony to the tense relationship
between the Shias and the Sunni Arabs. Attacking Al Jazeera
becomes a symbolic salvo in the simmering hostility" of
Iraq.(12)
These cases do not differ radically from Lebanon’s broadcasting
environment. In Lebanon, the TV landscape reflects that of the
sectarian political system: Mustaqbal (Future), owned by the
Hariri family, is a Sunni channel, LBC is Christian, Al Manar
is backed by Shiite political party Hezbollah, and NBN is partially
backed by Shiite parliamentary speaker and head of the Amal
movement Nabih Berri.(13)
The sectarian nature of Lebanese television was apparent last
year when over a million Lebanese thronged to Beirut’s
Martyrs’ Square on March 14 to demonstrate against the
Syrian occupation. Instead of broadcasting the event Al Manar
TV re-broadcast footage of "the Shia" demonstration
in downtown that occurred on March 8. Conversely, although LBC
and Al Mustaqbal did cover the March 8 demonstration, far more
footage was given to ‘their’ demonstration on March
14, repeating the images again and again in the weeks and months
that followed.
These three dominant Lebanese channels, along with NBN, are
in many senses leftovers from the civil war period, when radio
stations were backed by the separate factions before making
the leap to television broadcasting.(14) Iraq, on the other
hand, has made this transition during a devastating occupation
and at a more macro level in line with its population’s
own demographics.
At least in Lebanon’s case, such media publicly sustains
already deeply rooted sectarian divisions, albeit with greater
sensitivity towards other religions than in the past.(15) But
in Iraq’s case, where the media is caught up in political
turmoil, violence, and a renewed sectarianism that had been
kept at bay by Saddam Hussein’s regime, the struggle for
viewers—and voters—is perhaps even more acute than
in Lebanon, where sectarianism has been the status quo well
before the 1860 civil war, and is formerly enshrined in the
country’s constitution (1943). After all, the political
and social sectarianism of Iraq is, like the multiple political
party scene and media landscape, a very new arena that will
no doubt change alongside political developments. Channels may
fare as their political backers do, sink or swim. But with no
effective or impartial national public TV channel—the
moribund TeleLiban is hardly watched, and Al Iraqiya favors
Iraq’s Shiite government—both Lebanon and Iraq’s
media will remain driven by sectarianism.
Although the Iraqi market is likely to see more channels being
launched—the INCMC reportedly has 20 applications pending—broadcasting
will continue to be a struggle in the absence of stability.
And for the foreseeable future, funding for channels is likely
to remain primarily in the hands of political and religious
groups rather than the commercial or state sectors, much like
in Lebanon.
Paul
Cochrane is a freelance journalist based in
Beirut, writing on politics, media, education and business.
He formerly worked as an editor at Beirut’s The Daily
Star and was news editor of Middle East Broadcasters
Journal. Cochrane holds a MA in Middle Eastern Studies from
the American University of Beirut and a BA in International
Politics and International History from Keele University, England.
NOTES
1. BBC Monitoring
puts the number of Iraqi TV channels at 27, but new channels
are being launched. The Iraqi Media Commission did not respond
to emails or phone calls to clarify the exact number of channels
currently operating and how many TV applications the commission
has received. The only exception to the analogy of Lebanonization
is the armed resistance, which does not have its own TV channel,
though insurgetn groups do prouce their own video and audio
materials to post on the Internet or distribute to mainstream
media. Also, certain channels that are vocally opposed to the
US-led occupation air footage filmed by rebels, such as tapes
of kidnap victims and attacks on convoy troops.
2. To get an equitable view of Lebanon’s daily local news
you have to tune in to at least three TV channels which, incidentally,
are conveniently timed to allow viewers to do exactly that.
3. ‘Lebanonization’ has been used by media commentators
to describe the growing sectarian divide between Iraqis, implying
an impending civil war on sectarian lines, as occurred in Lebanon
between 1976 to 1990. However, although the term fails to take
into account the reasons for war in Lebanon, along with other
conditions, which vary quite radically from contemporary Iraq,
on a political-media level the term seems quite apt.
4. Harris refused to comment on their activities in Iraq. The
Harris website reported: ‘The year-ago quarter (2005)
benefited from $22 million in revenue from the Iraqi Media Network
(IMN) program. Sequentially, revenue increased 3 percent.’
5. Gordon Robinson. ‘Rebuilding Iraqi Television: A Personal
Account,’ Iraqi Media Developments Newsletter, Issue 28,
December 15 2004 - January 2005 www.standhopecentre.org/imdn/28.htm
6. Mark Mazzetti. ‘Military Will Keep Planting Articles
in Iraq,’ Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2006.
7. Committee to Protect Journalists press release, March 17
2006
8. Three Al Arabiya employees, including correspondent Atwar
Bahjat, were killed in February, 2006 by a unidentified group
outside of Samarra. Regarding the other eight fatalities, five
died in a car bomb that targeted Al Arabiya’s bureau in
Baghdad, and three were killed by US troops. Reporter Jawad
Khathem was the target of an armed kidnap attempt that paralyzed
him from the waist down.
9. Committee to Protect Journalists press release, March 17
2006
10. David Pallister, ‘Media mogul accused of running Saudi-funded
propaganda campaign,’ The Guardian, January 26, 2005
11. Louise Roug, ‘Unfair, Unbalanced Channels’ Los
Angeles Times, March 28, 2006
12. Magdi Abdelhadi. Iraqi Shias Slam Arab TV Channel, December
2005 - www.bbc.co.uk
13. Murr TV (MTV), owned by Greek Orthodox politician Gabriel
Murr, was supposed to be re-launched in 2005 after the government
shut the station down in 2002. There have also been rumors over
the past year of former General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic
Movement setting up a channel - Orange TV.
14. The Hizbullah backed Al Manar TV channel was launched in
1991 to promote the movement’s role in fighting the Israeli
occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000.
15. For instance
LBC now takes Ramadan into consideration for its programming
schedule, and hired, for the first time, a Shiite journalist
for a documentary series two years ago.
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