Nick Berg's Potential Employer: The Harris Corp's Iraqi Media Network

http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/features/html/iraq-analysis040115.html

The Harris Corporation, a US technology company which builds transmitters, is going to be responsible for the Arabic language programmes on Iraqi domestic radio. At least, that's the impression you would have had if you read the 14 Jan edition of the Washington Post, which a lot of Americans - including those in high places - did.

"Disgusted in Baghdad"

It's significant that a number of experienced journalists hired to help run the Iraqi Media Network (IMN) have walked out in disgust. One is veteran TV producer Don North, who described the IMN in Television Week as "an irrelevant mouthpiece for Coalition Provisional Authority propaganda, managed news and mediocre programmes." This week, on the radio programme Democracy Now! North said that "The Coalition Provisional Authority, Ambassador Bremer's organisation, doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between public diplomacy, in other words telling Iraqis and the world what we Americans are trying to do in Iraq, and giving the Iraqis a voice of independence that they need themselves." If that's what an insider thinks, imagine how the Iraqis must feel!

The plan on paper looks sound enough: a public broadcasting system based on the BBC and the American PBS. However, they've got one crucial thing wrong. Having the Pentagon and the Coalition Provisional Authority directly involved is the equivalent of handing responsibility for the BBC's domestic output to, say, the French President and Prime Minister.

(snip)

Such a structure would not be out of place today, and could have been put back in place by now, but for the insistence of those hired to run the IMN that all programming was to be organised from Baghdad. And it gets worse. Those entrusted to make the key decisions never went to find out what was actually needed by the people themselves. With breathtaking arrogance, they decided to impose their idea of what was appropriate over the heads of those who knew better. The experience of the broadcasting specialists attached to the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul demonstrates how officials at the IMN persisted in trying to drag defeat from the jaws of victory in the battle to win hearts and minds. But what do you expect when you hire a defence contractor to run the media?

http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/features/html/mosul030714.html

Mosul TV fights for independence

by Andy Sennitt, 14 July 2003

Coalition efforts to rebuild the Iraqi media appear to be running into serious difficulties. There are now clear differences between some local military commanders and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad over the best way to run regional stations. A case in point is the TV station in Mosul, in northern Iraq, where the local military are opposing efforts by the CPA in Baghdad to take over the station and integrate it into the structure of the Iraq Media Network.

According to many local journalists this is the first time since Saddam took power that journalists can report freely without direction from a regime. Before the war, the station served as Saddam's Baghdad-news downlink station for the Ba'ath Socialist Party.

(snip)

However, a member of the military team helping to oversee the station has contacted Radio Netherlands to tell us about what he calls an "upcoming problem." He tells us that the CPA is now attempting to take over the station, fire all the employees, rename it as part of its Iraqi Media Network, employ only 25 personnel of its choosing, and "basically censor the freedom of choice and freedom of the press the Iraqi people have come to value."

The CPA, of course, has its reasons for wanting to put the media under its direct control. With the deteriorating security situation, it's a major advantage to have a network of radio and TV stations which are easy to programme and co-ordinate. But in a country as large and ethnically diverse as Iraq, one size definitely does not fit all. The people behind Mosul TV feel that they know best what's needed for their particular region, and say they're fustrated that nobody from the CPA seems interested in learning more. Our source tells us that "As a journalist in the military I have a hard time believing this is the right move for the CPA to take. But no one in Baghdad wants to take the time to come down and look at the ground here and make an educated decision."

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0346/cotts.php

In October 2003, the Pentagon began soliciting bids for a $100 million renewable contract to run the Iraqi Media Network (IMN). The project is overseen by the U.S. military occupation (a/k/a Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA) and is rising out of the infrastructure of Saddam Hussein's state-run news network. The dream is for IMN to become a "world-class" media operation, including a 24-7 satellite channel, two land-based TV channels, two radio channels, a national newspaper, and TV and film studios in every major region of Iraq. To top it off, this producers' utopia is expected to provide "comprehensive, accurate, fair, and balanced news," instill a "code of ethics" in Iraqi journalists, and line up its own funding by the end of 2004. For now, IMN's $100 million budget, which is part of the $87.5 billion appropriation signed into law last week, comes from Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, a division of the Defense Department that handles psy-ops.

It seems that Iraqi citizens associate a centralized media network with the Hussein regime, under which dissenting journalists were often imprisoned or killed. According to a source who was recently in Iraq, Iraqis had looked forward to getting fair and balanced news from the U.S., but now view the network with "the same distrustful eye they regarded it with during the Hussein era—same TV, different autocratic rulers."

Aside from the technical and security issues, other challenges for Iraqi media moguls include programming, staffing, and censorship. Last June, Bremer issued an order prohibiting Iraqis from publishing or broadcasting anything that could be construed as an "incitement to violence," and in recent weeks, the CPA has restricted news coverage of hospitals, morgues, and hotel bombings. Rather than producing original content, IMN has broadcast endless CPA press conferences and old programming from the Mid-East Broadcast Corporation. Just before Ramadan, the IMN feed went up on satellite. But with dozens of local newspapers and competing satellite channels, it's unclear what the IMN will offer that Iraqis can't get elsewhere—or if future IMN news anchors will sound more like Ted Koppel or Baghdad Bob.

In the past six months, IMN has seen professional journalists come and go. The original news director, Arab expat Ahmad Al Rikabi, resigned in August, citing poor funding and a lack of editorial independence. His successor, George Mansour, is said to have been removed last week. The current news director is a former CNN executive editor, Ted Iliff.

The whole freakin operation sounds like a dress rehearsal for what the FCC may have planned for here.

sorry if not related to discussion

Iraqi probed in rigging of cell-phone pacts


According to the defense official, "significant and credible evidence" reveals "a conspiracy was organized by Auchi to offer bribes to 'fix' the awarding of cellular-licensing contracts covering three geographic areas of Iraq."
The contracts were won by Asia Cell Telecommunications Co. Ltd., Orascom Telecom Iraq Corp. and Atheer Telecom Iraq.
Officials believe that the contracts-award process was arranged so that companies linked financially to Auchi won the bids and that the common European cell-phone standard, known as GSM, would be the only standard used under the contracts.
As a result, Auchi succeeded in taking over the entire postwar cellular-phone system in Iraq by using contacts and front companies to design the architecture for the phone network in three sectors in Iraq, and to make sure that he owned or controlled the components.
Several American, British and Iraqi nationals are under investigation in addition to Auchi for the reputed cell-phone bid rigging, U.S. officials said.
Two American officials working within the Iraqi Communications Ministry resigned last month and accused a Pentagon official of improperly influencing another contracting process in Iraq. The matter involving all three officials is under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general.
"The implications of having fixed the tender for the entire Iraqi cellular-telephone system go beyond mere corruption and technological empire building," the defense official said. "It put in control of Iraqi telecommunications a man with an anti-American, anticoalition mind-set and a history of illegal international arms traffic. That control could allow him to compromise the entire Iraqi telecommunications system and undermine the Iraqi security system on an ongoing basis."
One problem for investigators is the June 30 deadline for turning over sovereignty of Iraq to a new government in Baghdad. After July 1, it will be very difficult to figure out how the licensing process for telecommunications contracts was carried out.
The investigation by the Pentagon's Directorate of International Armament and Technology Trade, a special unit set up to track arms and technology transfers, is under way on the telecommunications-contracting improprieties.

more
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040509-125033-9185r.htm




htuttle (1000+ posts) Tue May-18-04 05:27 PM
Response to Original message

1. The cell phone business in Iraq has been...interesting to say the least

Edited on Tue May-18-04 05:28 PM by htuttle
Jump in the Wayback machine with me, Sherman:

Very shortly after Baghdad fell, a Bahraini cellular company moved into Iraq and had a working cellular network going within a week. It used GSM, the cellular standard common in the region, and would work with most Iraqi's existing cell phones.

The US Proconsul forced them to dismantle this working network, since they didn't have permission to set it up. They'd already awarded the cellular contract to a US company -- unfortunately for Iraqis, this US company was planning on using CDMA, the US cellular standard, so that pretty much only US cell phones worked -- the ones normally used in the Middle East and Europe were incompatible by design.


Bailing Out WorldCom
Can You Hear Me Now, Baghdad?
August 5th, 2003 12:00 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0332/mondo2.php




Soon after Bush announced the liberation of Iraq and the end of the war, private entrepreneurs sprang into action by setting up cell phone service in Baghdad. (Saddam had banned cell phones.) Prime among them was Batelco, partly owned by the government of Bahrain. It invested $5 million to get a system up and running and promised to put in a total of $50 million. MTC Vodaphone, 25 percent owned by the Kuwait government and a franchisee of Britain's big Vodaphone company, rushed into the Baghdad market to set up its roaming service there.

But this notable example of spontaneous free-market capitalism was shut down by the U.S.'s Coalition Provisional Authority.

Who stands to gain from the authority's ban? Currently, the U.S. military and others use a Baghdad network built by WorldCom, the corrupt and bankrupt American telecommunications firm that is trying to revive itself by returning to the name MCI after defrauding the U.S. government. Of course, the Iraqi public isn't allowed to use that system.

(more)



(I originally posted this in a related thread in April. Just some more dots to connect...)

for broadcast media in Iraq, or perhaps SAIC subcontracted to Harris?

Here are a couple of useful links about the Iraq and Afghanistan "contractors"-you can click on any of the companies for updates.

Btw, I call them mercenaries.

Post-War Contractors Ranked by Total Contract Value in Iraq and Afghanistan
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/resources.aspx?act=total

Campaign Contributions of Post-War Contractors
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/resources.aspx?act=contrib

NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.