[Dean's World] Dave Price: Freedom Ignored By Free Press

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Posted by Dave Price:
Freedom Ignored By Free Press
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1168882014.shtml


   Amir Taheri [1]notes some of the problems with media coverage in Iraq:

     One popular interviewee was one "Abu Muhammad," who claimed to be a
     fisherman by day and "a killer of Americans" by night. One U.K.
     paper paid $2,000 (a tidy sum in the cash-starved Baghdad of those
     days) for an exclusive with Abu Muhammad, who later took up a full
     chapter in a book published in London. The scam ended when someone
     found out that Abu Muhammad was, in fact, a busboy at a local hotel
     who'd grown a beard and was "fishing" Western journalists,
     splitting the proceeds with his cousin, who acted as interpreter
     and guide.

   And Kathleen Carroll sniffs and calls any questions about media
   coverage ludicrous. But what's really fascinating is how the free
   press, cornerstone of a free republic, seems intent on ignoring, if
   not disproving, the progress of freedom in the new Iraqi republic.

     One young British reporter who didn't understand that was surprised
     to see himself shifted to Paris to become a European correspondent.
     He had made the mistake of reporting that Iraq looked almost like a
     success, given where it had come from.
     ...
     In 2006, almost 200 major reconstruction projects were officially
     completed and 4,000 new private companies registered in Iraq. But
     few seem interested in the return of private capitalism after
     nearly 50 years of Soviet-style control.
     Iraq's new political life is either ignored or dismissed as
     irrelevant. The creation of political parties (some emerging from
     decades of clandestine life), the work of Iraq's parliament, the
     fact that it is almost the only Arab country where people are free
     to discuss politics to their hearts' content - these are of no
     interest to those determined to see Iraq as a disaster, as proof
     that toppling Saddam was a modern version of the original sin.

   Every article on Iraq seems to contain the words "civil war," but the
   phrase "[2]one of the most free countries in the Mideast" seems
   conspicuously absent.
   The media's stance is close cousin to the attitude I mentioned last
   night; one denigrates the very people who protect their freedom to
   denigrate them, the other downplays the creation for others of the
   very kind of freedom that allows them to downplay others' freedom.

References

   1. http://www.nypost.com/seven/01152007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/iraq__why_the_media_misstep_opedcolumnists_amir_taheri.htm?page=0
   2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4450582.stm