BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. The news from Iraq this week started out bloody and only got bloodier. Sectarian tensions, already running high, erupted in the wake of Wednesday's attack on an historic Shiite mosque in Samarra. Over the next two days, dozens of Sunni mosques were attacked in reprisals, and more than 130 Iraqis were killed, including several Sunni clerics and three Iraqi journalists who worked for al-Arabiya TV. It brought the number of journalists and media workers killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war to 87, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Susanne Fischer is the Iraq Country Director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a group that trains local journalists. She says violence is hardly the only threat to the Iraqi media. There's also routine harassment from both Iraqi officials and U.S. soldiers. But, she says, it's by far the most serious threat, and it's only gotten worse in the past year.

SUSANNE FISCHER: Some reporters don't even tell their mothers that they're working as journalists. And the political climate has also changed for journalists because it's much more difficult nowadays for Iraqi journalists to get interviews with politicians or officials. The politicians very often refuse completely to give interviews to journalists who are opposed to their political direction.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So now that the government is established, there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape that the reporters have to negotiate. But how safe is it to criticize people in power generally?

SUSANNE FISCHER: There's a big difference, I think, between different parts of the government. I think, for example, that the President, Talabani, handles the press rather professional. He has very good advisors. But it can be very dangerous for journalists to criticize local politicians. Very often they are just arrested for months without being tried, and some reporters report about beaten up by the police, so it's rather dangerous to be critical.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tell me about the pressures posed by the U.S. military occupation. I know that last year there were seven documented cases of Iraqi journalists who were detained for weeks or months at a time by the American military, and one remains in custody now. Is this a big concern for the journalists that you've been training?

SUSANNE FISCHER: This is a very big concern for journalists who usually go to areas where, if they want to report about the insurgency, they have to talk to the insurgents. But then they're suspicious in the eyes of the military because they think they have contacts to people that they are looking for.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This week, we watched as sectarian violence in Iraq boiled over and scores of people were killed. What does this increasing sectarianism mean for the free media?

SUSANNE FISCHER: The media is very much divided among the sectarian lines. Most of the media outlets are financially dependent on parties and political associations. At least it would help very much if a newspaper wasn't financially dependent on a political party, but so far there is no economic structure for such an independent news outlet here. There are hardly any commercials. There is no real distribution system. People don't pay much for newspapers.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I wonder, given all of the other problems the Iraqi people have to deal with right now, how high on the list is press freedom?

SUSANNE FISCHER: That's actually a good question. Iraqi people are not so concerned about this. The press in general, in Iraq, under Saddam, it was always state-controlled, and they didn't expect very much from the media. And I have often run into people who still don't think that journalists ever tell them the truth.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: In a media landscape so full of obstacles and barriers, what do you think the biggest accomplishment has been so far?

SUSANNE FISCHER: I find it quite amazing that, despite all the obstacles, there has been a lot of progress, especially with young journalists who didn't work as journalists under the former regime. Many, many young journalists still strongly believe in a free press. They try, even if it's a party newspaper, to get in independent news reporting, to report across their sectarian lines. They look for the places where they publish their things, and the Internet is a great help, too.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Where do they get their models?

SUSANNE FISCHER: I hope they get a little bit from what we teach them, and then of course, they all watch a lot of satellite television. And many of them have met very many international reporters and have worked for them and saw how they are reporting. And I think many of those foreign journalists who work in Iraq are their models.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Susanne, thank you very much.

SUSANNE FISCHER: You're welcome.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Susanne Fischer is the Iraq Country Director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.