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January 11, 2005

You Can't Buy Better Press

According to the Financial Times:

The electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, interim Iraqi prime minister, yesterday handed cash to journalists to try to ensure coverage of its press conferences, in a throwback to Ba'athist-era patronage ahead of parliamentary elections on January 30.

After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill in an envelope.

Many of the journalists accepted the cash, equal to about half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper, and one jokingly recalled how the former regime of Saddam Hussein had also lavished perks on favoured reporters.

It seems the new boss is pretty much the same as the old boss in most respects. Then again, our government really liked the old boss as long as he toed the line, so why shouldn't they install someone quite similar? For that matter, isn't this how our government treats its friends in the press, only more subtly, by offering them access and other non-cash perks?

Posted by Mike Tennant at January 11, 2005 04:17 PM

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Posted by: alex at November 13, 2005 08:35 PM

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