BAGHDAD, September 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The two-week ban imposed by the U.S.-appointed interim Iraqi Governing Council on the activities and the coverage of the council official business on Arab news networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya has come under attack Wednesday, September 24, from Western media, which dismissed the decision as "a blow to press freedom."

"Such measures augur ill ... for a rapid transition to democracy in Iraq," media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontières (or Reporters without Borders) said.

The Paris-based group's general secretary Robert Menard said in a statement that "when media such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya give a voice to extremist political parties calling for violent and armed acts, they themselves are not guilty of inciting violence," reported Agence France-Presse.

"This decision is without any doubt a blow to press freedom," the statement added.

John Daniszewski, of the Baghdad bureau for the Los Angeles Times, strongly criticized the move.

"Of course we would oppose anything that stopped us doing our job and providing a full and accurate picture of what's going on in this country," Daniszewski said.

"It's important that journalists can work unimpeded," he added.

He further said covering the remnants of the ousted Baath Party did not mean correspondents were inciting disorder, violence or advocating a return of Saddam Hussein.

"If the Baath Party were to appear, it's important that people know about that," he told AFP.

Jerome Bony from France 2 television said the ban would not change the way journalists worked in Iraq, voicing concerns about the council's order to inform the authorities about attacks by Iraqis resisting U.S. occupation forces who ousted Saddam in April 2003.

"We are talking about a war, we are not making intelligence for either side," he said, adding that the Baath Party remains an integral part of the story.

"It's part of our job to find out what they are doing. If I can do an interview with Saddam Hussein I would do it. Everybody in the world wants to hear it," he added.

Drew Brown from Knight Ridder newspapers said it was "entirely bizarre" to have an interim leadership talking about freedom and democracy when their first concrete step taken was "to muzzle the press."

"Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are not necessarily balanced in their reporting and one could construe that with inciting violence but at the other end of the spectrum you have Fox News and they certainly are not balanced either.

"If the Governing Council is really serious about democracy then they are going to have to learn to take the good with the bad and a free, critical and maybe unfriendly press is part of that," he said.

Al Arabiya said it was "deeply saddened" by the council's decision, adding that it did not encourage violence and that objectivity and professionalism were hallmarks of its broadcasts since its launch.

"Al Arabiya can not pretend to ignore information that it receives from any party or from any region in the world, either in written form or filmed," it said in a statement.

The U.S.-sanctioned council also issued a list of rules it claims were broken by the two networks, and then served notice against all media that action without warning would be taken against any future infringements.