Staffers quit at U.S.-backed Iraq paper

[Supormom]

'Suffocated' journalists prepare to start their own publicationBy Daniel Williams
Updated: 4:44 a.m. ET May 05, 2004BAGHDAD, May 4 - Many of the editors and reporters at al-Sabah newspaper, a U.S.-funded publication that occupation officials have called a model for journalism in the Middle East, walked out this week and said Tuesday that they would launch their own paper. American overseers had threatened their future editorial independence, they alleged.

"We thought that the Americans were here to create a free media," Ismael Zayer, who had been editor-in-chief, said in an interview. "Instead, we were being suffocated."

Zayer said he could not accept the plan by the American administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, to keep the Arabic-language paper within the Iraqi Media Network, a body that occupation officials created to develop a public broadcasting service. Zayer contended that the newspaper would be subject to interference

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4901254/

[callous taoboy]

1. Yup-

You all need an Iraqi Bill Moyers, or Greg Palast, or Molly Ivins.

[54anickel]

2. kick

[Postman]

3. These people have more integrity in their fingers than do any of the ..

corporate whores who claim to be journalists in the United States.

[Supormom]

4. That was my first thought upon reading the article.