According to article in the New York Times, reporters in Iraq are not only facing threats of violence. They are also falling under the suspicions of a new law that criminalizes speech targeting the government.
According to the Times, three journalists with a small paper in southeastern Iraq are being tried for violating a code against “public insults” against the government. What’s so troubling about this is that, through all the mayhem of the guerrilla war, the press has remained remarkably free. The Times points out that the modern Iraqi press actually has more freedom than the Saudi press. And it certainly has more freedom than under Saddam, though some parts of the new law were taken verbatim from Saddam’s laws.
The risk here is that the government makes it harder for intrepid Iraqi reporters, who already face the threat of assassination regularly, to vigorously report corruption and government malfeasance. Since the Western media is too afraid (for good reason) to venture outside the Green Zone, it is likely that we in the West will also have less access to the goings on in Iraq in the future.