"Shoot the messenger."

I can't see too much distinction between saying something about how things are going pear-shaped, speaking on an American TV channel, which then of course will get picked up and rebroadcast on the Iraqi channel, or doing it directly in an interview on the same Iraqi channel.

Good news reporting doesn't trim or spin the facts to favour any side. That's the difference between real journalism and propaganda. And most of the time it seems to me that what is presented to us as "news" is much closer to propaganda than anything. And the messaage from the politicians seems to be pretty consistently that if it's not propagands (which with th BBCis still the case some of the time) it ought not to be allowed.

But the actual job of keeping the journalists in line is delegated to the employers, which is a much neater way of doing things and avoids problems about press censorship and freedom of expression, which might arise if it had to be done directly.

You cannot hope
To bribe to bribe or twist
Thank God! The British journalist.
But seing what
That man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.

(Humbert Wolfe.