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Iraqi Parliament Puts Controversial Media Law on Hold

Due to controversial wording in its draft and a general outcry from the country’s media community, Iraq has not passed its Communications and Media Commission law.
A resident buys a newspaper from a kiosk in Baghdad February 23, 2009. A boom in local media since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 has given Iraqis a choice between some 200 print outlets, 60 radio stations and 30 TV channels in Arabic, Turkmen, Syriac and two Kurdish dialects. Yet most media outlets remain dominated by sectarian and party patrons who use them for their own ends, and have yet to become commercially sustainable enterprises let alone watchdogs keeping government under scrutiny, the favoured Wes
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On July 7, the Iraqi Council of Representatives did not vote to enact two controversial laws: the Communications and Media Commission of Iraq (CMC) law, and the information crimes law.

A senior source at the office of Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi told Al-Monitor, “Political differences between parliamentary blocs, the major objections by civil society organizations, and great pressures from journalists forced parliament to not enact the two laws.”  

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