By Ian Piper BBC Monitoring

Iraqi readers have a choice of over 100 newspapers

US overseer Paul Bremer on 24 March signed an order setting up the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (ICMC).

The US-led coalition is hoping this will pave the way for independent and professional media in Iraq. The new body will be based on Western models like the UK regulator Ofcom and the US Federal Communications Commission.

The ICMC will have an annual budget of $6m, a tiny fraction of the $18bn the US says it will pour into Iraq's reconstruction. The money will come from international grants until it can raise its own revenues from licence fees.

The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council has agreed that the ICMC should be independent of a future interim government and not act as a new Information Ministry.

Broadcasting licences soon

In a post-war unregulated media environment, dozens of newspapers, radio and TV stations sprang up all over Iraq. International broadcasters flocked to Baghdad, anxious to gain a foothold.

They include the BBC, the US-run Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra TV network, and the French stations Radio Monte Carlo-Middle East and Radio France Internationale.

TV and radio stations broadcasting from Iran, meanwhile, have large audiences among the Shia of southern Iraq.

Most of the media are supported by some political interest. There is no commercial market to sustain a private media sector Khalil Osman, BBC World Service Trust

The US communications equipment company Harris Corporation announced in September 2003 that it had won a $100m contract from the Pentagon to run Iraq's domestic broadcasting infrastructure for 12 months.

Florida-based Harris operates the Iraqi Media Network (IMN), comprising two TV stations, one for 24-hour news and the other for entertainment, and two FM radio stations, with one focusing on news.

In addition to the Coalition-run IMN, there are currently more than 90 TV and radio stations on the air inside Iraq.

Tenders for new licences for commercial broadcasters will be issued soon, and the IMN channels will be incorporated into a new publicly-funded broadcaster.

So far 63 bids for broadcasting licences have been received - 28 for TV and 35 for radio.

Print media stabilising

Despite the lack of infrastructure in post-war Iraq, scores of newspaper titles have sprung up, mainly in Baghdad, feeding a public hungry for news from a free press that had been denied under Saddam's rule.

Out of more than 250 newspapers and magazines which appeared since the fall of the former regime, more than 100 titles are still being published.

Although the quantity is high, the relative quality of much of the journalism falls short of that found in Western publications. The Washington Post commented on 21 March that the idea of independently gathering news is still alien to most Iraqi journalists.

Journalists in danger

In one sense, Iraq has the freest media in the Arab world. But as Khalil Osman of the BBC World Service Trust notes, "most of the media at the moment are supported by some political interest. There is no commercial market to sustain a private media sector."

And with both local and Western journalists coming under attack - from US troops as well as Iraqi insurgents - it is becoming more difficult for news organisations to operate safely inside Iraq.

International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) General Secretary Aidan White has warned that "journalism in Iraq is struggling to survive in an atmosphere of violence and intimidation".

Without input from the global journalist community to provide much-needed training, the dream of an independent media may yet be some way off.

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.