[Meanwhile, Iraqis are getting their fill of unreality TV:]
For Many Iraqis, U.S.-Backed TV Echoes the Voice Of Its Sponsor Station Staffers Acknowledge Their Reluctance to Criticize
By Alan Sipress Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, January 8, 2004
BAGHDAD -- ... Nine months after U.S. forces closed Iraq's state-run television stations and subsequently launched the new channel with promises of a democratic dawn for the country's news media, the Pentagon-sponsored station has not won the trust of many Iraqis. By seeking to cast the U.S. occupation in the most favorable light, al-Iraqiya may actually be losing the war for viewers' hearts and minds.
"Al-Iraqiya is failing," said Jaafar Saddiq, assistant dean at Baghdad's College of Media. "It's technically backward. Its message is not convincing. It can't compete with other stations." ...
Media critics and many ordinary Iraqis agree that the station has yet to seriously tackle many problems now bedeviling everyday life, such as gas lines, electricity shortages and street crime. Alaa Juburi, a correspondent and producer who recently left al-Iraqiya to work for a U.S. television network in Baghdad, said local reporters should be grilling Iraqi ministers about these problems but are reluctant to challenge them.
Instead, the station provides an open forum for U.S. and Iraqi officials. In a program that aired several times last week, two spokesmen from the U.S. provisional administration and the Governing Council were shown over coffee at a local restaurant, talking for a half-hour about U.S. plans to transfer political control this year. Station officials said this was part of al-Iraqiya's mission to inform the public.
Coupled with a flat, drab presentation that Iraqis say is reminiscent of the grim newscasts of the Hussein era, al-Iraqiya's staid news judgment is costing it viewers. An October survey conducted for the State Department in seven cities found that 63 percent of Iraqis with satellite dishes preferred getting their news from either al-Jazeera or al-Arabiya -- the leading Arabic satellite channels -- while only 12 percent chose al-Iraqiya.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63166-2004Jan7.html>
Carl
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