Propaganda Wars in Mosul

The second channel is Ninawa Al Ghad – in English, Ninawa of Tomorrow - owned by Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former governor of Ninawa. The station was moved from Mosul to Erbil, the capital of the nearby, semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, shortly after the fall of Mosul to the extremists.

Both of the TV channels focus on the misdeeds of the IS group, its harassment of locals, conditions for displaced Iraqis and how long until Mosul is liberated from the IS group. However when one looks more closely at the programming and the kinds of information that the two channels offer as part of their anti-IS stance, it is also clear that they're making a lot of mistakes. Sources are not identified or trustworthy and often information is broadcast without any sort of visual “proof”.

Iraqi media – and indeed, almost all foreign media – are also very far from the realities of life on the ground in Mosul. They must depend on journalists who live outside the city and often they get the facts wrong. Some Iraqi media outlets also demonstrate bias in their reporting – media in Iraq is often partisan as it is owned or funded by political parties or those with a political or social agenda.

Before last June when the IS group took over there were an estimated 250 professional journalists in Mosul. Now around 150 of them are living outside of the city in various locations around the country while the rest are trapped inside Mosul. Some of those have been killed or arrested by the IS group and others are not working at all anymore, unemployed and inactive inside the city. A handful have been drafted in to cooperate with the IS group in disseminating the extremists' version of events.

This is why people have lost any kind of trust in local media outlets when it comes to Mosul, says Jamal al-Badrani, a journalist originally from Mosul but now living in nearby Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. “It is the lack of trustworthy sources and the lack of any journalists really working inside the city,” al-Badrani explains.

What is disturbing in Mosul now is how a large number of locals will comment on any news they hear or see. They tend to dismiss everything as lies or propaganda. “And especially when it comes to news about preparations for the liberation of Mosul and the expulsion of the IS group,” al-Badrani says.