Iraq delays plans to block news media as observers issue freedom alert

The Communications and Media Commission that regulates the news media in Iraq will give the targeted organizations more time to pay outstanding fees and renew lapsed licenses, deputy director Ali Nasir said.

The Commission denied that its previous order to close the agencies, most of them Iraqi, represented a crackdown on a free press. No media outlets were known to be actually shut down.

Still, the nation’s press watchdog Journalistic Freedoms Observatory decried the order as “a setback to the freedom of journalism in Iraq.”

The group accused the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of trying to silence critics. The dispute called into question the future of Iraq’s fledgling democracy nine years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Mr Nasir said yesterday that five organizations – including the BBC and US-funded Radio Sawa – have been working with the media commission to try to solve the problems. Most of the other organizations on the list are Iraqi, including prominent broadcasters that had criticised al-Maliki but also Shiite religious programming that had no apparent political stance.