The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Toward a free press in Iraq
: It’s going to be expensive and hard to develop a free and thriving press in Iraq.
Online and citizens’ media could help.
Larry Kilman of the World Association of Newspapers writes a fine piece outlining what needs to be done in ink and paper:
Democracy cannot take root without a viable independent press. But Iraq can
If the papers acknowledge they’re aligned with a political party, isn’t that a better situation than in the West where the media only pretends to be unbiased? Sounds like papers are more like blogs than big Western media there, and that’s a good thing.
I find it a tad condescending that this fellow from Amnesty International wants to change the Iraqi system with his indoctrination…er, training program.
the problem is no one wants a free impartial press in Iraq because the stakes are so high. Didn’t the editor leave one of the American-sponsored papers in the last week (sorry can’t find link) because he said there was editorial interference (I think he wasn’t allowed to run an advert that advocated resistance).
I’m sorry to say but I fear our own society and our rightly cherished press independence may not withstand the pressures if a similar situation to Iraq was occurring here.
There’s a reason why the First Amendment is first.
If we want to breed democracy in Iraq (although I for one am not totally sold on that), seems like the first thing we need to do is ensure freedom of expression, religion, petition, etc.
Free and thriving? Not that hard or expensive.
Unbiased? Well, that will take some work…
I think he wasn’t allowed to run an advert that advocated resistance
I think if you submitted an ad for armed insurrection against, say, the government of New York City to the New York Times it would probably be rejected, too. Freedom of the press does not mean that the press gets to do whatever they care to do. There are limits and there are standards and there is the rule of law.
The rule of law is a prerequisite for fundamental freedoms. One of the problems we’ve got in Iraq right now is attempting to express freedom of speech and of the press before the rule of law is established. An enforceable libel law, for example, would be a good thing.
We lost Zeyad (he started out all hopeful and upbeat, now he is just beat.)
And this is Karl Rove’s take on it
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Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, has told one Bush adviser that he believes that it will take a generation for the United States to live this scandal down in the Arab world, and that one of the dangers of basing a campaign on national security and foreign policy is that events can be beyond the president’s control.
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“Democracy cannot take root without a viable independent press. But Iraq can
Dave,
The difference is that the vast majority of people have accepted the government of NY. Everything I read about Iraq shows me there’s no such consensus (I for one am more than a little suspicious of the repeated assertions that it is only Bin Laden’s followers and foreigners fighting us over there).
Democracy cannot take root without a viable independent press. But Iraq can
Maybe we should just skip trying to establish a decent press and put all the money into getting universal Internet access and MT or Typepad or even Blogger to everyone. How about a disestablishment of the fourth estate in Iraq as a privilege and make them earn the trust of the people instead.
Like you, I trust Salam Pax and Zeyad more than any Big Media report coming out of Iraq these days. Let’s make their words more accesible to the populace (here and in Iraq) instead of creating an Iraqi Dan Rather, an Iraqi Peter Jennings or an Iraqi Tom Brokaw, not to mention Bill Moyers or Michael Moore. There are already enough idealogues who think they are in the middle running around over there.
“this is just condescension. Without training, they can’t do it properly.”
We know that everytime the civilized world averts its gaze, Arab slavers kidnap black Africans and sell them in eager markets across the middle east. They’re doing that right now in the Sudan. And in other parts of Africa.
Race slavery is just another market, too right? Who are we to interfere with a thriving market just because it produces something we abhor?
Better to let those blacks suffer than impose our foriegn condescension on their masters, right?
But when things are good, they are very good. The weather is fine, and when the sun sets we sit in an outdoor tea house listening to pro-Falluja songs blasting from a car stereo while teenagers stand beside the car trying to look tough. If we get sick of that we go to a friend’s newly opened mobile-phone accessory shop in Adhemiya, where he has to dodge demands for phone covers with pictures of Saddam on them. Even more surreally, a kid came in asking if he had any of the old “Saddam, we love you” songs that he could use as a ring tone. Tigris Tales: Another day, another traffic jam – and another taxi driver rattling off anti-American conspiracy theories
I think that allowing a bunch of outside money and NGOs would be the worst thing to encourage. It sounds like a recipe for a press that nobody in Iraq will trust.
The second worst thing would be to send them all to J-School. The development of journalism schools and the increased reliance on press services have resulted in news that reads and sounds homogenized, all with the same point of view, that of an east coast liberal. Even the Deseret News from Salt Lake City reads that way.
It strikes me that what is lively and interesting about blogs is that they don’t have editors, except for the bloggers themselves. They can be outrageous, politically incorrect. And people can develop their own picture from all the points of light and darkness.
It took a long time for Western media to become big business and reduced to a single product across the country, like McDonald’s and Burger King. Knowing what to expect is fine when you’re buying hamburgers but not when you’re looking for information. That’s what Iraq will get if we pour in too much cash to jumpstart a “modern” free press.
I don’t know how you get a free market where the Saudis and Iranians are ready to pour in money, but I think the Pentagon would do better than the World Bank. The World Bank seems to encourage dependence and then pulls the rug out. The Pentagon is less likely to care if the project ever makes money. The main thing is to give the people a choice of points of view, but make money. If it doesn’t have to do that, it won’t be free.
Jeff, this isn’t even close to fair use. Shame on you for stealing another’s work.