Kansas City News Blog

It's a rare journalist who doesn't fear for her job these days. We've all had co-workers and media colleagues join the ranks of the unemployed in the past year. But the relentless and depressing reports about the demise of American journalism were put in startling perspective early Sunday morning during a discussion about Iraqi and U.S. media at the University of Kansas.

On this side of the Atlantic, seven college students from Missouri and Kansas universities lined a table at the Dole Institute of Politics. Thousands of miles away in Iraq, 10 panelists from the University of Baghdad sat in a cluster flanked by men in U.S. military garb. Sure, the kids studying journalism at KU face a tough job market when they graduate. But this hour-long video link was a stark education about a media landscape where warlords act as editors and stories can get you killed. 

Abed Al-Salam Ahmed, dean of the Media College at the University of Baghdad, said the fall of Saddam Hussein opened up the media floodgates with a rash of upstart news outlets. But the vacuum of regulation has been a mixed blessing. "After 2003, there is no clear role for government involved in media," Ahmed said through a translator. "At the same time that media is experiencing freedom, it's experiencing pressure from mafias and various gangs in Iraq."

Lamis Munir George, a senior in journalism who said she was one of very few women in the college program, agreed that the new landscape created a different set of problems. "All the institutions became private or personally owned, but also controlled by political groups," George said. "They belong to political blocs or groups that claim independence but are not independent, of course."

"The circumstances of Iraq force us to be careful to keep our lives," she added. "Maybe the government is not getting involved in Iraqi media today, but there is power or authority to those armed and walking down the streets and that's why we're forced to abide by the reality we see today in Iraq."

There have been successes, the panel said. Because of pressure from Iraqi journalists, they said, the prime minister is taking a harder line on government corruption. But, still, on the streets, citizens shrug off many media reports as "paper talk." Before 2003, the media was a mouthpiece for government propaganda, the Iraqi panelists explained. But now, acting as a soapbox for political groups, some media outlets still call for violence and chaos. "So confidence of the public in media is weak right now," Ahmed said.

The Iraqis didn't have a glorified perception of American media, though. They asked the local students questions that pointed to suspicions of those in the Middle East:

"Some say that freedom of expression in the United States is nothing but a phantom, that the American State Department controls the American papers, especially The New York Times. What is your answer to this opinion?"

"The images of Arabs in the American media is negative because they mix the radical Arabic image with the general Arabic image."

"Some believe the Zionist movement controls the media in the United States."

For the most part the local students answered the Iraqis' questions with platitudes about the importance of the First Amendment, confidence that the media is free of influence or bias and hopes that the Iraqi journalists will be able to build a similar system in the Middle East.

The two groups did find common ground on one point. Toward the end of the conversation, Ali Khanfous Zamil, a political science student, asked how American citizens viewed the war in Iraq; whether they thought it had a positive or negative impact on the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East.

Greg Miller, a junior at Northwest Missouri State University, said Americans are well aware of the damage caused by the unilateral U.S. approach in Iraq. "It's going to take a long time to build back that credibility," Miller said.

Despite the hiccupping video link, it was easy to see all 10 Iraqi panelists nod their heads.