The Paradox of the Press

‘Objectivity is a legend, a myth’ –Abdul Sattar Jawad

Today I had the pleasure of attending Abdul Sattar Jawad’s lecture on the current situation in Iraq. He was the first man to publish a secular newspaper in English in Iraq and is the head of English Literature at Baghdad University. He is currently working as a visiting professor of journalism and literature at Duke University under the Scholars at Risk Program. He did not want to leave and come to America but many of his colleagues and fellow professor have been torn from their classroom while lecturing to be beaten and sometimes killed due to their religious views (or lack there of). Abdul could not return to his office at Baghdad University because it was being surrounded by religious zealots who threatened to kill him and almost did.

His message, as I received it, was something like this: America is a primary cause of the current and former state of Iraq. Intellectuals in Iraq welcomed the war and were glad to see Sadam Hussein out of power. He did not, on the other hand, approve of the subsequent actions of the US. Abdul thinks that America should have been much more forceful in the beginning. We should have kept an intense marshal law in place and played watchdog in every political process and progression. Our failure to do this is the reason that Iraq is now in a state of chaos which consequently lead to the bombing of Abdul’s newspaper’s headquarters.

What I found most interesting was his paradoxical view of free press. Abdul is obviously a major advocate of free press in Iraq, yet he also voiced a serious critique of American media and free press in general. He held that there is no doubt that the liberal media was a source of coercion in the UN’s decision to back off and let Iraq rebuild their own structure of government and society. Abdul held that first and foremost the Iraqi intellectuals desired new visions and ideas from America—not for America to back off and let Iraq be Iraq.

What are we to take from this? My thoughts bring me back once again to fear the double edged sword of ‘free’ press—although it is essential to present the people with the freedom, we should be weary of what they produce. The people are not always (perhaps rarely) correct.