Bad News Equals No News
"We cover all sides of the stories in Iraq, and have done for many years. The fact that so many channels have been hit all at once though suggests this is an indiscriminate decision.Oops, rather to be expected. Iraq's media commission has accused a handful of stations of publishing what they term as misleading and exaggerated reports. A somewhat more serious accusation is their claims that the stations are guilty of airing "clear calls for disorder and for launching retaliatory criminal attacks against security forces."
"We urge the authorities to uphold freedom for the media to report the important stories taking place in Iraq."
Al Jazeera
It is all, needless to say, sectarian-oriented. The country which had begun, obligingly enough, under U.S. direction years ago, following the ouster of Saddam Hussein, to rule as a tripartite-representative government sharing ministries and responsibilities among the Shia, Sunni and Kurd authorities has degenerated back into one dominating the others, with a de facto Shia-led government that has alienated its Sunni and Kurdish partners.
Al Jazeera was launched by Qatar, an oil-wealthy Sunni-led kingdom and though its reportage-perspective is claimed to be neutral, fully objective in nature, it does veer off, sometimes fully, more occasionally nominally, into subjective territory. Obviously Iraq's media commission, doing the bidding of the government, has decreed that Al Jazeera's operation in the country has been inimical to the cause of unity.
A unity that has been obviously strained by the divisive actions of Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who has very effectively dominated the country's politics, maintained closer ties with Iran, and given short shrift to the Sunni minority, let alone the semi-autonomous Kurdistan. Not surprising that Al Jazeera maintains a Sunni perspective to its reportage.
Qatar, its sponsor, is hardly disinterested. A critic along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey of the Syrian regime and by extension Iran, and Iraq, it would hardly commend its news arm for supporting the Shia-led Iraqi government in its opposition to the Sunni population of the country. The commission had charged the stations - another nine satellite TV channels as well as Al Jazeera, with promoting "banned terrorist organizations who committed crimes against Iraqi people."
Should the ten stations attempt to continue operating on Iraqi territory they risk 'legal action' from security forces. If forcible shut-down is considered to be 'legal action'. At the present time, there is ongoing violence in Iraq, over and aboard the violent clashes and suicide bombings that erupt at intervals; the violence a result of protests against the Shia government's spurning of shared government.
Violence that has resulted only after months of peaceful protests that have accomplished nothing positive in ameliorating the situation of exclusion of the Sunnis. And isn't that, come to think of it, how the situation in Syria that has now claimed up to 100,000 lives, began? From a peaceful campaign of protests, degenerating into clashes and finally the violence of bitter conflict that it has become.
Pitting fanatical Shia against extremist Sunnis. The lingua franca of the Middle East.
Labels: Conflict, Controversy, Iraq, Islamism, News Media
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 30, 2013
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