Mideast still lacks media freedom - Al Jazeera chief

Media freedom in the Arab world has not improved since Al Jazeera launched 13 years ago and some governments are even taking a more hardline stance against critical reporting than they used to, the Qatar-based network’s director general has said.

Despite a flurry of new satellite channels hitting the airwaves since Al Jazeera launched in 1996, there has been little progress made in terms of legislation governing freedom of speech and local governments’ tolerance of criticism, Wadah Khanfar told Arabian Business in an interview.

“I do feel that there is no dramatic change taking place, either forwards or backwards,” he said.

“Legal implications are very difficult now, actually, in many countries where people can be sued by governments, or they could be put in jail for certain reasons that are related to freedom of expression.”

Al Jazeera broke a lot of taboos in the years following its launch by reporting more critically on Arab governments and addressing issues that had previously been off limits, such as women’s rights.

As a result many Arab journalists have become more outspoken in their reporting, but they are still vulnerable to draconian media laws and hostile governments.

“I must say that this new attitude, which is in my opinion very positive and people are used to it now, is not at all convincing governments to open up,” Khanfar said of the growing amount of critical content in Arab news outlets.

“It is actually putting governments in a position where they are trying more and more to silence voices and they are sometimes inventing new laws and regulations to work against the freedom of journalists.”

The top staff at the Doha Centre for Media Freedom resigned last week citing clashes with Qatari officials over press laws in the country and the government’s refusal to grant visas to persecuted journalists from countries including Iran.

Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the UAE to clarify and amend parts of its pending media law, which the government is hoping will help develop a free press in the country.

The New York based group said that although the pending law is a significant improvement over the existing one, steep fines for journalists who breach it means it will fall short of the government’s stated goal to rid the press of self censorship.

For the full interview see this Sunday's Arabian Business magazine.

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