The revocation of broadcasting licenses of 10 TV Channels by
the Iraqi government is an indication that the Shiite-led government feels it
is losing ground against the rival Sunni faction. It may also be a sign that
attempting to control media can no longer be done locally (see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/middleeast/iraq-suspends-al-jazeera-and-other-tv-channels.html?ref=middleeast&_r=0).
A good part of my time in Bosnia as a part of the NATO Combined
Joint Information Campaign Task Force (CJICTF) was spent dealing with media.
This ranged from learning about the importance of pirated Venezuelan TV soap
operas to inciting riots against NATO forces by local radio stations.
For the most part Iraq is an urban AO and as such is more
influenced by media than Afghanistan. While the broadcasts may be transmitted
locally, they originate outside the country so that the revocation merely
affects local reporting. The revocation of course does not impact an Internet
based media or messages delivered via smart phones.
The revocation can also stand for the proposition that
sectarian strife is only minimally impacted by influence operations and that
people are pre-disposed to believe negative reporting about long standing
grudges.
The challenge for influence operations professionals becomes
to ‘move the needle’ so that the population is more able to receive ‘true’
views of what is going on so that they can make informed decisions notwithstanding
the ethnicity of the people in it. Perhaps everyone should listen to the song “Everyone
is a little bit racist” from the musical Avenue Q. Check out the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9CSnlb-ymA.
Song starts about a minute into the video.
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