BAGHDAD - Iraq announced a draft law Friday enshrining protections for journalists and providing them and their families with government grants if they were to be killed or injured while doing their job.

The proposal was criticized by a Baghdad-based media watchdog, though, which said it was a tool for the government to restrict press freedoms in one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.

"The Iraqi government believes in providing security and protection for journalists and enabling them to perform their activities freely and safely," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

"The draft law is aimed at providing protection for Iraqi journalists in Iraq and is committed to ensuring their rights."

Dabbagh said the law would enshrine the right of journalists here to use information and statistics without having to disclose their sources, though he acknowledged media workers would have to say where they received their news "in cases required by law."

It would also ensure a journalist would not be pressured into publishing material that was "incompatible with his beliefs, opinions and conscience" and would allow every journalist to "comment as he may consider appropriate to clarify his opinions".

The family of a staff journalist killed doing their job or in a "terrorist attack" would receive 2.75 million Iraqi dinars (2,400 dollars), Dabbagh said in the statement.

Media workers, both freelancers and those working for a news organization, who suffered major injuries would get 1.5 million dinars (1,300 dollars), and reduced-cost medical treatment.

The families of killed freelance journalists, however, would receive no compensation.

But the draft law also says journalists should not use the media to threaten citizens, "compromise the security and stability of the country, ... achieve a personal benefit that may be detrimental to others, or plagiarize ideas without reference to a source."

Journalists should also not publish unproven facts unless they mention the uncertainty surrounding the information, nor "announce false information or statements."

The draft law was criticized by the Baghdad-based Journalism Freedom Observatory (JFO), a media defense organization which says that 247 media workers, the vast majority of them Iraqi, have been killed since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"We are rejecting the draft law... because it is not going to be used to protect journalists, but as a means for the government to use it against journalists and to limit their freedoms," JFO executive director Hadi Jalow Marai told Agence France-Presse.