Amid threats to personal safety, accusations of disloyalty, and mixed messages from the US authorities, Iraqi journalists and media workers reported widely on the 30 January election.  How did they manage? Index on Censorship´s Rohan Jayasekera reports. (10-FEB-05)

The Iraqi media entered the start of the election campaign period on 15 December working on what media rights groups had already dubbed the world”s most dangerous assignment. Nearly 40 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, were killed in the line of duty in 2004.

Journalists are no longer seen as impartial observers by either side. Reporters were beaten, threatened, detained without cause, kidnapped for criminal and political reasons and killed, sometimes deliberately. “We feel defeated and we are frustrated… We fear that we will be branded as the spies and collaborators of the occupation”, said Ali Hasan of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

Conflicting messages were sent out by the US authorities — on the one hand they advocated a free media, but on the other, they closed down newspapers and detained accredited journalists. The handover to an interim Iraqi government did not improved matters, as the new authorities had learnt bad lessons from their predecessors.

“We face different dangers now and there is no law to protect journalists in Iraq”, Hussein Muhammad al-Ajil of al-Mada newspaper told Iranian-American journalist Borzou Daragahi.

The danger increased in the run up to the election. On 12 September 2004 al-Arabiya journalist Mazen Tumeisi died in an US helicopter attack. He was the eighth al-Arabiya staffer to die since March 2003, and one of three killed by the US army in circumstances that have yet to be fully explained.

Al-Arabiya reporter Abdel Kader al-Saadi was detained by US troops despite being clearly identified as a journalist. His station has received numerous threats from claimed supporters of the Jordanian insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, demanding that it support the “jihad” against the US occupation and Iraqi government.

Insurgents and the country’s criminals have also struck. Al-Sharqiyya television reporter Likaa Abdelrazzak was killed in the street in Baghdad on 27 October and Sada Wasit newspaper reporter Raad Beriaej al-Azzawi was kidnapped in November, one among many. Another Iraqi journalist reporting on police patrols in the town of Allawi was caught by insurgents.

Daragahi also reported that one journalist at al-Mada was threatened with death after he wrote about alleged corruption in an Iraqi government ministry. The newspaper was also targeted by rockets.

Western journalists, largely trapped in their hotels, relied on Iraqi reporters for information, and as the target profile of western journalists increased, so did the threat to Iraqis working with them. Iraqi media faced similar threats, as well as the attentions of an interim authority that has sought in the past to impose its views on the media, ordering it not to attach “patriotic descriptions to the insurgents and criminals”.

Yet with most election hopefuls unable to get out and campaign on the streets, names of candidates kept secret until shortly before the election, and the vote itself judged on national issues, not local agendas, the Iraqi media became the main player in the campaign.

The general view is that they performed better than expected. Sunni groups refusing to take part in the election expressed their views in supporting newspapers and were often quoted in “what would be considered the popular press, owned by independent or pro-election party newspapers”, according to  Kathleen Ridolfo of Radio Free Europe before the election. Reports and commentaries in the print media included discussions about the role Islam will play in a future Iraqi state with a Shi’ite majority, the possible withdrawal of multinational forces, the Kurdish issue and the coming constitution. Newspapers covered the activities of the Election Commission.

As for television, Allawi was said to dominate the airwaves. A new feature for Iraqis was the use of sleekly-produced TV adverts to persuade people to vote and, close to election day, to try and persuade Iraqi Sunnis to defy boycott calls. Chat shows on Iraqi radio made a dramatic impact. Party supporters filled streets with campaign posters, ripped down and replaced by rivals with new ones.

A variety of alternative promotional techniques emerged: the Iraqi Hezbollah published a calendar with its campaign message, and another party distributed video CDs with party messages interspersed with comedy clips.