Choking voices
As a result to the restrictions imposed by the law ceiling freedom of journalism, media professionals started turning to the rising influence of legislations to the freedom of media.
“Choking voices” is a study about Arab media legislations in five Arab countries; they are Morocco – Algeria – Tunisia – Lebanon – Bahrain.
Those five countries were specifically selected as they represent some of the Arab geographic regions on one hand, and on the other hand they show examples of different patterns of Arab regimes in the region.
This study addresses confrontation between media professionals and legislations whereas it has recently arisen since Arab governments resorted to use laws to restrain freedom of journalism and terrorize media people.
The study was issued in 2005 by Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ) in Jordan with the support of Internews Network. The study pointed to journalists who had turned to be permanent visitors in courts and feel that they can be thrown in jail any time or penalized with large bail amounts.
The study mainly aimed to discussing and analyzing a number of crucial points of the legal structure that are tied to the freedom of media and penalizing legislations in the targeted countries. It also aimed to display facets of progressiveness or declination in legislative guarantees for freedom of media, analyze social, political, economic, and cultural climates surrounding media work, governments’ readiness to respond to non governmental organizations aiming to advancing the legal structure for media professionals’ role in promoting freedom of media.
The study also aims to acknowledging boundaries of the independence of the judiciary and judges generally, as well as monitoring existence and effect of specialized networks to work on legal and judicial defense, legislative monitoring.
The study is supervised by Negad El-Borai- attorney at law and director of the United Group, written by Essam Eddine Hassan and Reda Helal. It consists of three parts plus introduction and background. Part one; general conferences for freedom of media in and out the Arab region. Part two; freedom of media conditions in Great Moroccan region. Part three; freedom of media conditions in the east and Arab gulf. Part four; conference conclusions.
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