  In a setback for democracy in Iraq, the interim government closed down the Baghdad office of Al-Jazeera , the leading news network in the Arab world.
Al-Jazeera has been the frequent recipient of audio tapes from Saddam Hussein (pre-capture), Osama bin Laden, and video tapes of hostages, and then turned around and aired them free of any apparent safety concerns. The network's office was closed for one month for "being the mouthpiece of terrorist and criminal groups. " As a journalist, any form of government censorship over the media is cause for concern in my mind. The only justifiable cause for censorship, in my mind, is when human lives are at stake. And you can certainly make a compelling argument for that in this case.
I don't get to see Al-Jazeera's broadcasts, so I have to go on what little I know about this situation from American news reports. The closure may very well be necessary, but it is a dangerous precedent to set in a fledgling democracy. This is exactly the way the democratic Russian government began to take its now-strangling grip upon media after the fall of the Soviet Union. 
