IRAQ – FREE PRESS UNDER ATTACK: (not doubt supported by BushCo)

[rodeodance]

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480&lftnav=progressreport

IRAQ – FREE PRESS UNDER ATTACK: More than 150 new newspapers and several local TV and radio stations sprang up immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq – "one of the biggest success stories of the U.S.-led invasion." In recent months, however, Knight Ridder reports Iraqi police have "begun cracking down on local journalists, creating a wave of fear reminiscent of Saddam's era." Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, "tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities 'to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests.'" The cases include a photographer for a Baghdad newspaper who says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations, a reporter for another local paper who received death threats from police recruits and a local TV reporter who says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.