Iraqi journalists decry country's biased media

[sabra]

Source: hurriyet daily news

The increasingly partisan nature of Iraq’s press is suppressing fair and impartial media coverage of politics, according to journalists in the country.

As politicians come to understand the power of the media, they have sought to control it, thwarting balanced, professional journalism, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, or IWPR, reported Tuesday, citing journalists.

"There is no independent media outlet in Iraq. I cannot name any satellite channel or a newspaper and say, ‘This one is independent.’ They all either belong to a political or religious party," said Hadi Jalo Marei, chairman of the Journalistic Freedom Observatory, or JFO, a Baghdad-based media rights watchdog and IWPR partner.

With political disputes often played out in competing partisan media outlets, local reporters and editors say their respective organizations impose strict rules about coverage, with no regard for journalists' ethical commitment to impartiality.

As most domestic news agencies are linked to or funded by political parties, observers say that a culture exists in which media aligned with a certain group provides positive coverage of their leaders while criticizing opponents.

Read more: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=journalists-decry-iraq8217s-biased-media-2010-12-08

[smiley]

1. get used to it.

.... smells like freedom in Iraq.

[SkyDaddy7]

2. Sounds like we accomplished something! Is Rupert Murdoch...

involved? The man has successfully done that to the American media for the most part!

EDIT: Change wording.

[tanyev]

3. Learned well, they have.

[No Elephants]

4. "journalists' ethical commitment to impartiality"

:rofl: