By Elena Lesley
Two years after the Arab Spring, media
freedom is under threat in the region, with journalists subject to legal
and physical attack in Tunisia and Egypt, and prone to self-censorship
in Libya’s unstable social environment, according to sources in the
industry.
After the uprisings that swept North Africa in 2011, “I
had high expectations I would finally work independently and with
freedom,” said Magdy Samaan, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph‘s
Cairo bureau who formerly wrote for Arabic-language Egyptian
newspapers. “But it has been a huge disappointment. The attitudes of the
Muslim Brotherhood are even worse than Mubarak.”
The recently
published Press Freedom Index for 2013, compiled annually by Reporters
Without Borders, ranked Egypt at 158 out of 179 countries, Tunisia at
138, and Libya at 131. A higher score corresponds with less media
freedom.
Egypt and Libya both slightly improved their rankings -
eight and 23 points, respectively - while Tunisia dropped by four
points. In its methodology, Reporters Without Borders takes into account
a number of factors, including journalists killed or imprisoned, as
well as perceptions related to self-censorship, transparency, and media
pluralism.
“This is not a surprise. Reporters Without Borders is
echoing what has been happening in Tunisia as far as press freedom is
concerned,” said Kamel Laabidi, president of Tunisia’s National
Committee of Information and Communication Reform (INRIC). “The
Islamist-led government has been turning its back on international
standards of freedom of expression.”
In its summary introduction
of the 2013 index, Reporters Without Borders wrote that, in North
Africa, “some of the new governments spawned by these protest movements
have turned on the journalists and netizens who covered these
movements’ demands and aspirations for more freedoms.”
Laabidi
said the media environment was more open immediately after the Tunisian
revolution, but that the situation had deteriorated under the current
government.
He faulted leaders for failing to implement decrees
115 and 116, which were drafted after the revolution in an effort to
guarantee press freedom. Rather, he said, the current government has
used the penal code from the Ben Ali regime to take legal action against
journalists.
“The media should not just say nice things about
the government,” he said. “The time when journalists were jailed for
doing their job should be over.”
Laabidi cited the rising number
of attacks against journalists as “a source of alarm,” especially since
he said the government has launched no official investigations to pursue
those responsible.
Journalists in Egypt also face prosecution
and persecution, Samaan said. Although he had previously written for
Arabic-language newspapers, before and after the revolution, he began
working for English-language press in the fall of 2011 due to an
increasingly restrictive local media environment.
Protesters on the first year anniversary of the Tunisian revolution criticise the pace of democratic reform
“I will not accept to work for a newspaper that is not completely free,” he said.
The
Muslim Brotherhood has brought journalists to trial for insulting the
president or religion, Samaan explained. Yet he added that the current
regime does not yet have complete control over media and journalists are
“still in a revolutionary mood.”
He worries for the future,
however, and said the anti-journalistic attitudes of the Muslim
Brotherhood have penetrated the views of many uneducated Egyptians.
“People
don’t understand the point of media,” he said. “In the countryside,
people will yell at journalists: ‘you are destroying the country! You
are corrupt!’”
Meanwhile, in Libya, journalists “are witnessing a
totally new experience of press freedom that they had never experienced
before,” according to Dr. Said Laswad, editor of The Tripoli Post and professor of political science at Tripoli University.
“In
some ways, they just cannot believe it and they also do not know what
to do with all that freedom of expression after so many decades of total
oppression.”
While Laswad and other journalists interviewed said
Libyans were very proud of their new freedoms, they said they also
resort to self-censorship at times for social reasons or out of a fear
of potential reprisals.
After having lived under such a
repressive dictatorship, fear still exists among journalists, who “would
still rather try not to push the margin of freedom further,” Laswad
said.
Due to a weak central government and lack of rule of law,
journalists do not trust that institutions exist to protect them from
reprisals, particularly from local militias, Laswad and others
interviewed said.
The lack of professionalism is also a major
hurdle to a free and independence press in Libya. One foreign
journalist, who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons, referred
to Libya as “a land of rumours.”
Laswad noted that Muammar
Gaddafi was able to stay in power by fostering ignorance, spreading
misinformation and stifling the development of professional journalists.
Now, in order to promote democracy, journalists must be properly
trained and protected, he added.
The media environment at the
moment may appear more free than in Tunisia or Egypt, but this could
change as the government solidifies and centralizes power, according to
sources inside Libya.
In all three countries, journalists remain
anxious about the prospects for truly free and independent media and how
this will affect post-revolution social development.
According
to Laabidi, “despite the hope prompted by the Arab Spring, those in
power do not seem to understand that to lead countries to democracy you
need to let the press do its job.”.
tripoli post.com
