Iraq Revokes Licenses of Al Jazeera and 9 Other TV Channels
By TIM ARANGO, NYT
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s government on Sunday revoked the operating licenses of Al Jazeera and nine other television channels, saying that they were inciting sectarian conflict. All but one of the channels are aligned with Sunni financial backers, and the move was widely perceived as a crackdown on dissent by the Shiite-led government that is facing an increasingly violent Sunni uprising.
The decision will not banish the channels from the airwaves: as satellite channels based abroad, they are beyond the reach of the Iraqi government. But it prohibits the channels’ journalists from reporting inside Iraq.
On Sunday afternoon, the normally bustling newsroom of one of the channels, Baghdad TV, was quiet. Riad Barazanji, the general manager of the station, which has ties to the Iraqi Islamic Party and some top Sunni leaders, said he told the channel’s reporters, “This is a good chance for you to go home and see your wives and children after so much time covering the uprisings.”
The edict issued by Iraq’s media commission, which has wide authority to regulate who is allowed to practice journalism and what information is reported, covered a range of channels, many of which have aggressively covered the Sunni protest movement in Iraq. Among the channels are Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab network based in Qatar, and Sharqiya, which has a wide viewership among Iraq’s Sunnis. It is based in Dubai and is owned by Saad al-Bazzaz, a wealthy Iraqi businessman.
(More here.)
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s government on Sunday revoked the operating licenses of Al Jazeera and nine other television channels, saying that they were inciting sectarian conflict. All but one of the channels are aligned with Sunni financial backers, and the move was widely perceived as a crackdown on dissent by the Shiite-led government that is facing an increasingly violent Sunni uprising.
The decision will not banish the channels from the airwaves: as satellite channels based abroad, they are beyond the reach of the Iraqi government. But it prohibits the channels’ journalists from reporting inside Iraq.
On Sunday afternoon, the normally bustling newsroom of one of the channels, Baghdad TV, was quiet. Riad Barazanji, the general manager of the station, which has ties to the Iraqi Islamic Party and some top Sunni leaders, said he told the channel’s reporters, “This is a good chance for you to go home and see your wives and children after so much time covering the uprisings.”
The edict issued by Iraq’s media commission, which has wide authority to regulate who is allowed to practice journalism and what information is reported, covered a range of channels, many of which have aggressively covered the Sunni protest movement in Iraq. Among the channels are Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab network based in Qatar, and Sharqiya, which has a wide viewership among Iraq’s Sunnis. It is based in Dubai and is owned by Saad al-Bazzaz, a wealthy Iraqi businessman.
(More here.)
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