By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 22, 1998; Page A27

BAGHDAD, Iraq—Sanctions against Iraq have pushed this authoritarian country toward a slightly more open media policy after 30 years of socialist-style restrictions on what its citizens are allowed to read, see and hear.

President Saddam Hussein remains beyond scrutiny, of course, but the trying circumstances of common Iraqis, as they struggle with shortages of food, medicine and other goods, is under the lens. To survive the sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the government has shrewdly realized that the stiffer the controls imposed from outside, the bigger the need to allow for breathing space in a country long ruled by secrecy and the suppression of individuality.

In addition, Iraq's more media-savvy officials -- anxious that the plight of Iraqis is being eclipsed from the world's conscience -- have lobbied for opening up to the international media, albeit within limits.

On the domestic front, the new strategy means newspapers outside the framework of the ruling Baath party are publishing for the first time since 1968. As for the rest of the world, officials here fear that the lives of 22 million Iraqis are being shortchanged by one-dimensional shouting matches between Iraqi leaders and the West. As a result, they have eased the way for cooperation with the foreign media, with an eye toward keeping the focus on hardship conditions.

But all change is relative here.

Although a select few Iraqis who travel or who can afford it have computers with the Windows 95 insignia flashing on their screens, they have no access to the Internet. Satellite dishes are reserved for official use and, except for those being used by foreign journalists, remain illegal. Anyone caught with a satellite dish is fined the equivalent of $300.

But news from the outside has nevertheless started trickling in. The first step came a few years ago when Babel (Babylon), the newspaper owned by Saddam Hussein's son Uday, instituted a page with international news -- mostly concerning Iraq -- under a heading that conveyed distrust of all things foreign: "At the Discretion of News Agencies."

A few months ago, BBC and CNN news shows on Iraq featuring Iraqi and foreign officials began appearing on Iraq television in a program called "From the Screen of Others." Occasionally soccer games and soap operas are interrupted for live comments by senior U.S. officials, for example, on crises and issues of the day involving Iraq.

The public appetite for independent media appears sharp. Copies of about a half-dozen new newspapers, weeklies and biweeklies, run by professional syndicates and Iraqi investors, are snatched by eager readers within hours of hitting the news kiosks. The latest publications sell out well before the official ones, though they cost four times as much.

Coverage in Nabdh Al Shabab (Pulse of the Youth), Al Mustaqbal (The Future), Al Musawir Al Arabi (Arab Photographer), Al Ittihad (The Union), Al Zawra (The Round One, an old name used for the city of Baghdad) is sensationalist and alarmist. Acts of immorality, and petty crimes dominate their pages -- as does coverage of administrative excesses.

Such criticism of the government would have been impossible when official dailies ruled the newsstands. "As long as the issues are not linked to major policy or guidelines coming from central authority, there seems to be acceptance and tolerance of criticism," said Faisal Yassiri, an Iraqi journalist and film producer. "The experience has proven to be therapeutic, too."

Naji Hadithi, an adviser to Information Minister Humam Abdel Khaliq, describes the stifling old-guard newspapers, with their strong rhetorical bent and penchant for glossing over failures and personal detail, as "red death." In Iraq's new tabloid press, information about a collapsing bridge or overflowing sewers due to a department's neglect is news. These issues, Hadithi explained, are of "immediate concern. This is the bridge people take to work every day. All this was overlooked before."

Local scandals about party officials stealing public funds are displayed right alongside tales of sex and incest. The headlines are bold. The stories include facts, dates, names.

Officials are taking note.

"Many officials fear these newspapers. . . . You often spot these papers on the desks of senior public servants," said Yassiri, who manages the first non-Iraqi Arab television station in Iraq -- Qatari-owned Al Jazira, which airs live news from Iraq.

Photographs of two-headed babies, newborns without skulls and other birth defects are displayed on the front page with the names of hospitals and doctors who attended the deliveries. Official blame for the deformities is placed on malnutrition and sanctions. But with the threshold for truth rising, no story is being swallowed whole.

"They are not being candid about these birth defects. Are they due to American weapons or some substance recently destroyed in keeping with United Nations regulations?" asked one skeptic.

In addition to changing media policies, key officials have changed their media personas, as well. No longer are their briefings too long, too rhetorical or too hard to digest. Spokesmen for the regime now arrive at press conferences armed with cogent arguments, talking points and buzz words. The sessions are scheduled before the evening news and are kept short and punchy.

"Iraq has entered the age of the sound bite, said Amjad Tadros, a CBS manager who just spent three months in Baghdad.

Yassiri said officials "have finally realized that the voice of Iraq is not being heard. It is not even reaching Iraqis, who tune in to the BBC and the Voice of America to find out what is going on."

Cable News Network, NBC and the BBC (banned for five years) have established offices with official Iraqi blessing, Hadithi said. CBS is debating a similar move. Foreign networks no longer must drive their film 500 miles overland to Amman, Jordan, to link up with communications satellites, a trip more time-consuming than a trans-Atlantic flight. Now, more than 14 satellite uplink stations have been set up in Baghdad, and none is censored directly. However, information ministry officials closely monitor the content once it is on the air.

Hadithi is described as the brains behind the government's new approach, one of a group of Young Turks who recognize that Iraq's pariah status and isolation had left the world unmoved by its citizens' suffering under sanctions. It was on the eve of the latest crisis, which began brewing last November, that the information minister gave Hadithi new powers. Once overshadowed by hawks in his ministry who considered him too chummy with the Western press, Hadithi now can be found in his office until midnight, writing editorials for official papers, listening to requests from foreign journalists, granting visas and nudging local editors to push the envelope.