I found out that U.S. forces had captured Saddam Hussein from a Jordanian taxi driver.

Four of us had just crossed over the bridge between Eilat and Aqaba and piled into Aid's rickety cab. As soon as he figured out we were Americans he said, "I heard on Al-Jazeera: you have captured Saddam today and he is alive! You can see it yourself on CNN."

Which is exactly what we did, sipping a beer at the hotel bar (border crossing is thirsty work) with occasional commentary from our Bedouin bartender.

Just think: in June, 1865 it took two and a half years for word of the Emancipation Proclamation to trickle down to the freed slaves in Texas. In December, 2003 we learned of Saddam's capture in Iraq the same day it happened from a cab driver in Jordan who saw it on a satellite broadcast from Qatar.

Modern mass communications is miraculous but it comes at a cost. One of the costs is dead journalists.

This year alone, 13 journalists have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq. Since the invasion a year ago, 26.

The latest were Al-Iraqiya correspondent Asaad Kadhim and his driver, killed early last week.

A U.S. Army spokesman claimed they were filming an off-limits checkpoint and that several warning shots were fired. A cameraman who survived the attack insists that there was no warning and that the bodies of his colleagues were riddled with bullets.

Al-Iraqiya, a Pentagon-funded TV station, is criticized by many Iraqis for broadcasting pro-American propaganda. ''People used to tell Asaad that he was a collaborator.... Now the Americans killed him. Tell me who is the collaborator?'' said Kadhim's brother, Ali, according to an Associated Press report.

May 3rd is International Freedom of the Press Day, a time for us to remember reporters who have been killed, injured, jailed, tortured and harassed to bring us the news.

It's also a day to celebrate the blessings of a free press.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression," according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Iraq did not have a free press in its 30 years of one-party rule, notes Reporters Without Borders, an international media watchdog group. For the ten years preceding the U.S. invasion, Saddam's son Uday was head of the journalists' union.

Uday silenced dissent and made the media to parrot propaganda through harassment, humiliation, blackmail, arrests and executions. Some reporters reportedly had their tongues cut out for criticizing the president.

Eventually, satellite dishes were banned, Internet access was limited to 30 state-monitored centers and even possession of a marker pen - used to scrawl anti-Saddam graffiti on walls - was grounds for arrest.

Things are better now. Much better. In Baghdad alone there are at least 130 independent newspapers.

But the Iraqis are not happy. Journalists are subject to a coalition code of conduct prohibiting "intemperate speech that could incite violence," which is being enforced broadly.

Broadcast outlets - mostly under coalition control - downplay the insurgency and paint a rosy picture of the occupation, which they, of course, call the liberation. Iraqis with access to a satellite dish watch Al-Jazeera or the BBC.

Iraqi journalists who complain (the coalition has 350 on the payroll) are threatened with being fired.

Ibrahim Nawar, head of the Arab Press Freedom Watch said, "they presented Iraqi journalists and the Iraqi general public with a bad model and a rotten structure that every independent journalist in Iraq and in the rest of the Arab world is fighting against, the model of the media controlled by the state!"

A free press is the bedrock of democracy. The Arab world is watching closely, trying to figure out whether the U.S. is sincere in its claim of trying to nurture a democratic Iraq or whether we are attempting to establish a puppet state.

Press freedom is one of the most visible benchmarks of our intent. We can't afford to blow it.

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.