Nov 07 2013
Licensing AmmanNet’s News Website
By Daoud Kuttab
News websites in Jordan have been shaken up ever since the Abdullah Ensour government decided to enforce a controversial law that forces websites that deal with Jordanian news and commentary to obtain a licence, like the newspapers.
Unlike the audiovisual law, by equating news websites to newspapers, the legislature has created an unusual and hard-to-manage system that forces the Press and Publications Department to interfere daily in the workings on the Internet, which, the world insists, should be free and unfettered.
In implementing the law, the department has chosen not to include many sites that “deal with news and commentary about Jordan” sighting obscure reasoning. Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo and social media sites and individual blogs have been allowed to continue operations based on the subjective whims of the department.
A further problem is the condition that every news website has to appoint an editor in chief who has been a member of the Jordan Press Association for at least four years. The problem with this is that the JPA has been a closed shop, allowing as its members only journalists working for the written press. Continue Reading »