Feb 13 2011
Press freedom in Jordan
This article appeared in Jo magazine (Â http://bit.ly/hmpZGx )
FEBRUARY 06, 2011
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for the new administration to get riled up about the media. Just before the turn of the new year, two deputies got into a verbal exchange of insults over backdoor deals for committee membership and when the media exposed the altercation, the speaker of the Lower House promised angry deputies that the new assembly would find ways to curb the press.
It’s a place we’ve been before.
For a short while after the appointment of HE Prime Minister Samir Rifai’s first administration, it looked like Jordan’s traditionally restrictive attitude toward the local media was about to change. The cabinet issued new guidelines for the government back in January 2010, detailing how it planned to divorce itself from all appearances of soft sponsorship that influence journalist neutrality, public employees who also worked in the media were asked to choose one or the other, and all sorts of rewards given to journalists were to be stopped. And although the Amman-based Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists said in its 2009 annual report that media freedom had regressed, its director was on record saying that the NGO welcomed the new guidelines and was taking a wait-and-see attitude. Continue Reading »