Has media contributed in democracy solidification in Kurdistan?

Wednesday, 24 November 2010 10:54

Shafaq / Mustafa Hamid Shafaq interviewed a number of the concerned in the field of media in Kurdistan Region …

about the actuality of the Kurdish media and its trip towards the achievement of free and professional media.
The head of Kurdistan journalists Farhad Auwni said: "After the Kurdistan Journalists Union had started work, it contributed in the development of some of the prevailing laws in that period, including the Press Law No. 10 of 1993 issued by the Parliament of the Kurdistan region, which underlined the absence of any kind of censorship. But because of the emergence of the large number of media workers and the large number of newspapers and magazines and the establishment of radio and television stations, the union began to think of organizing the media work by preparing a draft law for that purpose. After agreement on a reasonable formula that satisfies all parties the union initiated to submit the project to the parliament of Kurdistan Region, which passed a law number 35 of 2007 called the law of journalistic work
". The media person and the Voice of America correspondent in Kurdistan Region Omar Farhadi said:" I have been working in the Kurdish section of the Voice of America for a long time without being subjected to any harassment of any kind ."

The Media person the Caldaic Assyrian Aamir Paul expressed his appreciation for the positions of Kurdistan Journalists Union to embrace Iraqi journalists regardless of their nationalities and religions, on the contrary of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, which is still dealing with journalists according to certain selectivity which is far from professional and legal regulations.
The Free Iraq Radio correspondent in Erbil, Abdel Hamid Zebari said: "The media in the region has witnessed, a qualitative leap, but it did not quite live up to the level of ambition and is still suffering a lot of gaps. Most workers in this field need to be trained and qualified, and the media boom came at the expense of the quality of media material and many media organizations prefer quantity and they do not emphasize on quality. Furthermore, the Kurdish parties support the media institutions that belong to them and they do not extend their support to the independent media. Also they distribute their free of charge publications.