Media Report Calls for Much Needed Reforms

Ahead of the May 13-18 visit of US President George W. Bush to the Middle East, Reporters Without Borders wrote a letter to the White House urging the President to raise the issue of censorship and other concerns with respect to freedom of the press.  Reporters Without Borders drew on its 2008 Annual Report, titled “Between Repression and Servility,” which provides general analysis and useful detailed information on the conditions of the media in each of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

For the most part the report paints a discouraging picture, noting how “the region’s chronic instability is used by political leaders as a permanent excuse to silence journalists, whose every criticism is seen as willfully destabilizing their regimes.”  As in previous years, the report provides a worldwide press freedom index, which ranks all the countries in the world on press freedom, based on a scientific methodology.

Commenting on the situation in the Middle East and North Africa for 2007, Reporters Without Borders notes how “needed changes to press laws in the region have still not been made and legislators seem in no hurry to decriminalize press offenses.”  Specific countries are singled out for praise, but most states in the region are faulted for their shortcomings.  The report states, for example, that “press freedom is in no way guaranteed in Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Saudi Arabia and journalists there know they must censor themselves on pain of serious consequences.”