In the battle of the TV channels, the US had no weapon like al-Jazeera, reports Lara Marlowe
When Shia Muslims loyal to Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr rioted against coalition forces last week, one of the first things they did was seize a television transmitter belonging to IMN (Iraqi Media Network), the fledgling press structure established by the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
In a textbook case of Third World revolution, the insurgents captured the means of communication. Sheikh Moqtada's men began feeding in video-cassettes of his anti-American sermons until they were dislodged by US forces.
Simon Haselock, the former British Royal Marine who is trying to establish an Iraqi broadcasting system resembling the BBC, took the seizure of the transmitter as a compliment. "You don't take over a TV station unless you think people are listening," he says. Likewise, he adds, the fact that three IMN employees were murdered in northern Iraq last month showed that insurgents see it as a threat.
In the first year of occupation, attempts to foster a free media in Iraq were mainly ill-conceived and wasteful. The CPA's propaganda efforts are run by what one employee calls "Bush babies" - political appointees whose only concern is obtaining good press back home in America.
As a result, the people whom the CPA most needs to convince - the Iraqis - are ignored. Iraqi journalists are left floundering with the CPA and CPIC (military) press offices in a morass of non-information.
For western journalists working in Iraq, the system is difficult. "Every time I come here, I post a list of requests to the CPA," says Rohan Jayasekera, an editor with the respected London-based publication "Index on Censorship", who has made five trips to Iraq to monitor and assist the emergence of Iraqi journalism. "I have never received a reply. CPIC is the same."
Instead, both press offices bombard journalists with e-mails containing speeches by Paul Bremer, the US administrator, and cryptic announcements of US setbacks, often 48 hours after the fact. Journalists who work their way through four checkpoints to attend press conferences in the convention centre are often told that they have been postponed. Two or three postponements in a day are not unusual.
"Getting information in this town is hard enough for a western journalist. It's absolute murder for an Iraqi," says Mr Jayasekera.
Mr Bremer's closure of the weekly newspaper al-Hawza, run by followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, sparked the revolt of Shia Muslims in Baghdad and southern Iraq. The sort of naive statements which got al-Hawza and other Iraqi media into trouble with Mr Bremer are understandable, says Mr Jayasekera.
"Iraqi journalists ask, for example, if it's true that the Americans came here for oil, or if it's true that half the US army is Jewish," Mr Jayasekera continues. "They have been reading articles by US commentators on the Internet who say the US came here for oil and to defend Israel. Who are they supposed to go to for explanations? The CPA? Good luck!"
Iraq needs an anti-incitement law, Mr Jayasekera says. The problem with Order 14, the decree used by Mr Bremer to shut down al-Hawza, and before that a tabloid-type paper called al-Mustaqilla, is that there is no legal appeal system. Instead of suddenly pouncing on offenders, he would like to see the US carefully debunk false information in Iraqi newspapers.
Instead of communicating, the CPA has handed multi-million-dollar contracts to Anglo-American public relations firms like WPP and Bell Pottinger to "sell" US policies to the Iraqi people. The slick billboards vaunting the merits of the new Iraqi police force, the interim constitution and the scheduled transition to "sovereignty" on June 30th do not seem to be working. The billboards are often defaced with black paint, and few Iraqis are convinced by them.
In postwar Iraq, satellite television is the primary source of information, with 60 per cent of Iraqis relying on it for news. The US had nothing even approaching the professionalism of al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic channel. In Falluja, for example, AFP quoted a US colonel as saying that he ordered an air strike which killed 40 people in a mosque. Yet Al-Jazeera's correspondent reported that there were few casualties, if any, and that the mosque was hardly damaged. It took US officials two days to correct the story.
The CPA budgeted $97 million for IMN last year. That included funding for television and radio stations and the daily newspaper al-Sabah.
The contract to run al-Iraqiya television was given to SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation), a Pentagon contractor which specialises in equipment for "psy-ops", for example for broadcasting propaganda spots from aircraft. "To say that SAIC made a pig's ear of (the TV station) would be a disservice to pigs," says Mr Jayasekera.
Al-Iraqiya went on the air with no broadcasting experience and no programmes. They were reduced to taking videotapes from the former home of Saddam's son, Uday, to fill airtime. The Pentagon's contractors also wasted money buying equipment incompatible with what was already in place in Iraq.
In December, the CPA replaced SAIC with the Harris Corporation, another firm with strong Pentagon ties. Harris subcontracted the job of running al-Iraqiya to Dorrance Smith, the former producer of Olympic Games coverage for the US network ABC, and the Lebanese channel LBC - which was founded by the Maronite Phalangist militia. But, by all accounts, al-Iraqiya has improved.
Mr Haselock, who worked with post-war media in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, has just pushed through Orders 65 and 66, which will create a public broadcasting service in Iraq, with a multi-ethnic board and external financing, as well as a regulatory commission. It has taken a year to get this far.
He says that the occupation authorities expected Iraqis to understand American concepts of democracy and freedom of expression overnight. When he asked members of the US-appointed Governing Council if they were ready to accept, for example, a Panorama-style documentary investigating corruption in the council, they "hemmed and hawed". Yet, despite the obstacles, he believes that he can create an Iraqi public broadcaster. "If it is trusted, it will be hugely instrumental in the democratisation process," he says.