Protests hit Iraq 'Coalition TV'

Peter Feuilherade
BBC Monitoring

Two hundred Iraqis vented their anger in Baghdad on Wednesday against what they called "immodest images" on the coalition-run national television.

Al-Iraqiyah TV is run by the coalition authorities

The protesters - from the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala - congregated outside coalition headquarters in Baghdad, accusing the Al-Iraqiyah network of offending local religious sensitivities.

They said some of the programming on Iraq's only national TV channel had "failed to take into account the sanctity of the holy month of Ramadan and was incompatible with Iraqi culture", Iranian news agency Irna said.

Apart from news and lengthy appearances by coalition officials, Al-Iraqiyah TV carries Egyptian soap operas, Arabic music videos, football matches and late night films, topped up with old programming from the pan-Arab TV channel MBC.

Stiff competition

Established in May by the US-led coalition authorities, Al-Iraqiyah dominates the terrestrial TV market, where it has to compete with local broadcasters and Iranian television in border areas.

It is the preferred channel in 59% of the homes that can only receive terrestrial television, according to a recent US survey.

But it has failed so far to win the battle for the satellite TV viewers, who make up about a third of the Iraqi audience.

With its 12% rating, it lags a distant third behind the pan-Arab channels Al-Arabiyah and Al-Jazeera, which share almost two-thirds of the satellite TV audience in Iraq.

Coalition mouthpiece?

Al-Iraqiyah is part of the coalition-run Iraqi Media Network (IMN), which also includes two radio stations and a daily newspaper.

But media analysts in Iraq say Iraqis appreciate Al-Iraqiyah more as a source of entertainment than news and current affairs.

Many are still suspicious of what is seen as a successor to the old Iraqi television, which was dominated by Saddam Hussein's propaganda.

The channel's managers vigorously reject accusations of being a mouthpiece for the coalition authorities.

But analysts say that until the US administration makes a final decision on whether to treat Al-Iraqiyah as a PR vehicle or a US-funded but editorially independent media outlet, the channel will remain a hybrid that excels in neither role.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.