24 Jul 2012 | Middle East and North Africa, Tunisia
In an unexpected move on 4 July, the National Authority for Information and Communication Reform (INRIC) put an end to its activities. INRIC was created after the fall of the 23-year rule of Zeine el-Abidin Ben Ali last year to help reform the Tunisian media landscape by proposing a set of recommendations and legislation which would guarantee the Tunisian citizen’s right to a “free, pluralistic, and fair media”.
In a communiqué, INRIC said:
In the absence of practical steps reflecting a real political will which would build a free and independent media committed to international standards, the authority announces its rejection to continue serving as décor at a time when the media sector keeps moving backwards. Thus it [the authority] does not see the point of carrying on its missions.
The media freedom body has had some sharp disagreements with PM Hamdai Jebali’s interim government. On 2 November 2011 the former interim government of PM Beji Caid el Sebsi approved decree-laws drafted by INRIC which guarantee press, print and publishing freedom and the creation of an independent authority for audio-visual communications. These two laws have not yet been implemented.
On two occasions, the current government appointed heads of public media institutions without consulting any media bodies or syndicates. For INRIC, this was a blow to public media independence.
Index on Censorship spoke to Hichem Snoussi, a member of the dissolved INRIC, and representative of the freedom of expression organisation Article 19.
Index: Can you briefly summarise the most significant work results of INRIC?
Hichem Snoussi: Decree-law 41 on the right to access administrative documents, decree law 115 on press, printing and publishing freedoms, and decree-law 116 which stipulates that an independent authority for audio –visual broadcasting needs to be created, are among our major work results [unlike decree-laws 115 and 116, law 41 was implemented]. We also granted broadcasting licenses to 12 private radios and five private TV stations. In April, INRIC submitted a general report on the reality of the media landscape in Tunisia, and the need for keeping the reform process going.
INRIC does not want the executive branch to interfere with the media sector in general, and public media in particular, since the latter’s new mission should be scrutinising and questioning the government’s performance. This was a key point of disagreement between the government and INRIC.
Index: Last April, Rached Ghannouchi, leader of Ennahdha Movement, which heads the three-party coalition government, suggested the privatisation of public media institutions. There are those who have speculated that by privatising the public media sector, Ennahdha would seek to impose a certain editorial line which would serve its political interests. What was INRIC’s reaction to such a suggestion?
HS: We rejected the suggestion, because such proposal would only seek to put pressure on public TV journalists, and push them back to square one, the square of propaganda, and marketing for a certain point of view. When it was made clear that this silly proposal is not open to discussion, the government resorted to the appointment method. The government has succeeded in appointing heads of all public media institutions, in light of the non-implementation of the decree-law 116 stipulating that the appointment process is participatory and takes place according to measures set by skilled and competent figures [from the media sector].
Index: What role for the current government in the non-implementation of decree-laws 115 and 116?
The government abused its powers, and broke the law in an authoritarian manner by not implementing these decree-laws which gained the satisfaction of different international freedom of expression organisations like Article 19, the BBC and the Open Society. The government did not only stand in the way of implementing these decree-laws, but it went further by breaking law 115 by creating a committee for granting professional press cards. This committee is illegal because the government appointed Mr. Kazdaghli, who is in charge of media in the Prime Ministry’s office, as its president instead of a judge. [Chapter 8 of law 115 stipulates that an independent committee presided by a judge from the administrative court should take in charge granting journalists professional press cards.]
Index: During a press conference [on 6 July] Lotfi Zitoun, an advisor to the PM, said that the decision on whether or not to implement decree laws 115 and 116 lies in the hands of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) [elected on 23 October 2011]. Is this a legitimate reason for not implementing the two laws?
HS: There is no doubt that the NCA as an elected institution reflecting the people’s democratic will has the right to examine decrees and valid laws. However, the NCA is supposed to amend and support democratic processes, within the framework of these legal texts. Deploying the majority pretext by the NCA as a way to thwart the establishment of a democratic path is a betrayal to the people’s will and the martyrs’ blood.
Index: The Islamist party Ennahdha (which controls more than 40 per cent of the parliamentary seats) has, in several occasions, called for the draft of a constitutional clause which would outlaw assaults on “the sacred”. In case the NCA passes such clause, to what extent would freedom of expression be threatened in Tunisia?
HS: In France, and Germany there is the Holocaust law which prohibits the denial of the Holocaust. If we are going to pass a law that condemns assaulting the “sacred”, we also need a law that criminalizes atheism accusations too. The “sacred” has to be defined in a very specific and detailed way. This definition cannot be expanded, so that it would not stand in the way of art and creativity. Today the debate on the “sacred” comes within an electoral propaganda, and aims at diverting the public debate from its direction. We do not need chains. We need freedom to face past wounds.
10 Jul 2012 | Tunisia
On 4 July the National Authority for Information and Communication Reform (INRIC), a body enlisted with helping reform the media landscape in Tunisia, announced the end of its mission.
In April 2012 INRIC had submitted its report with a set of recommendations that would seek to pave the way for the transformation of the media landscape in the north African country into a democratic, independent, and pluralistic one.
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26 Jun 2012 | Americas, Mexico
As Mexican voters get ready to eelect their next president1 July , all four candidates have made statements in support of free expression and the protection of journalists. In the last five years, 44 Mexican journalists have been killed, most of them in the provinces.
During a June meeting with farming groups in the state of Veracruz, one of the most deadly provincial areas for journalists, Enrique Peña Nieto, the frontrunner candidate for the former ruling party Partido Revolucionario Institucional, (PRI) offered a one minute silence in memory of the nine journalists killed in that state in the last few months. Organised crime would not “force Mexicans to stop expressing their freedom of expression in terms of ideas; this is the pillar and strenght of our democracy,” said Peña Nieto.
Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate for the leftist Partido de Revolucion Democratica (PRD), has also said that individual, religious, political freedoms and freedom of expression would be the most important rights his government would respect if he won the elections. And Josefina Vasquez Mota, the candidate for the ruling Partido Accion Nacional also hitched her wagon on freedom of expression. “When the right to freedom of expression is gone, we lose all our other freedoms,” during International Day for Freedom of Expression. Gabriel Quadri of the smaller Nueva Alianza party also endorsed better security for journalists.
This is good news. It took several years to reform the legal infrastructure to prosecute crimes against journalists. A new law that makes the murder of a newsperson a federal crime was recently approved, but many problems remain to make it work, including establishing a new legal infrastructure and incorporating new language in the penal code.
However, for the last few months of the campaign, the elephant in the room has been the mistrust that exists among sectors of the population which feel the media manipulates the information they get, especially at election time — a mistrust that goes back to the 70 years the PRI was in power, and was believed to have fixed elections with the help of the news media. The YoSoy132 university student movement, which was launchedin May, struck a chord when it protested against television monopolies. While cable television offers a variety of options, non cable subscribers can only see two companies, Televisa and Television Azteca. This is difficult in a country where 80 percent get their news from television.
The Guardian also drove the point home, when it published a story based on leaked documents that sought to prove that Televisa had received multi-million dollar payments to promote the image of the PRI´s candidate Peña Nieto. The documents had been first mentioned in an earlier story in 2006, and their veracity was downplayed by some media in Mexico.
Amedi, civil society organization that promotes media plurality, suggests that whoever wins the 1 July presidential election should push for two more national open channels at least, and better policies to promote digital television.
17 Feb 2012 | Sub-Saharan Africa
In places like Zimbabwe the need for “outsider” critique is essential: solipsistic regimes create complex narratives about betrayal and patriotism; no more so than in Zimbabwe. Whether material originates from “inside” or “outside” the regime can be important in establishing its veracity.
A very small minority of Zimbabweans (about 3 per cent) live in isolated elite comfort, with their cable televisions buffering the reality of Zimbabwe’s weak local media situation, watching whatever they feel like, from Hollywood films to BBC to Al Jazeera and DSTV, whilst the rest of the citizens either see it with their own eyes, or rely on the local media.
And herein lies the problem: no critical, debating, investigative or contextual news gets reported.
The recent news that the government plans to invoke a peculiar mangle of laws to prevent “foreign” papers (including the Sunday Times and various South African papers) distributing unless they have local offices, means that Zimbabweans access to information is even more limited than it was previously.
For some wealthier Zimbabweans, this move is not necessarily being greeted with alarm. Linda, a Zimbabwean journalist in who works across the region, says “Yes, I get foreign media, I like it. But it’s a pose, getting your information from abroad. Local media is fine. We get constant Russian television, that’s sufficient.” Others, however are astonished, and see this bill as an extension of the theme that Zimbabwe’s media really only exists to bolster and defend the ailing, and increasingly vulnerable president Mugabe.
Zimbabwe is a peculiar beast: at one level it is now several steps away from the hyper-inflation days of 2008. But, it is still floundering in economic and social chaos. Since the introduction of the Botswana pula, the South African rand and the US dollar, trade is improving, but this is not reflected in the health of the country’s media.
In the absence of spare cash to buy papers, the shoddy state of local newspapers, and the restrictions imposed on media operations, people get inventive. Kubutana stays afloat using a variety of techniques which employ both technology and people’s ability to talk to each other face to face. They’ve changed the way milions of people vote in Zimbabwe. They provide a symbolic and actual hub for information. Still it’s the life on the street that is important, the constant mingling, chatting and gossiping that keeps the public sphere alive, with a few exceptions.
In this context, the Zimbabwean market traders and street vendors are essential. They know stuff. They see it with their own eyes and they constantly have a stream of people to interact with: at a micro level they are intellectual hubs. When the licencing system of street fruit vendors forced Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi to burn himself to death, Zimbabwe’s street traders clocked it.
In January 2012 in Harare, several police officers were left injured during clashes involving removing street vendors from central areas. The Zimbabwean reported that two vendors had to be hospitalised after being tortured by police, and two reporters from the local newspaper the Daily News were detained by police. But they didn’t give reasons, context or views of those involved. Although the protests are a long way from sparking a revolution in Zimbabwe, the determination of vendors to fight for their livelihoods is a sign that people will speak out.
Street vendors, like many in Africa, are living a hand to mouth existence, often moonlighting several jobs, and the licencing system is a well-known ploy of governments here in the region to “clean up” their unsightly presence- particularly when there’s foreign dignitaries visiting, or an African Union delegation. Even streets get renamed. It’s all about looking good, yet paradoxically street vendors are essential for the large majority’s needs. They only exist because of the numerous trade agreements the Zimbabwean government has signed with the Chinese to ensure there’s a steady flow of buckets, washing up bowls, plates and radios, which of course local people need, want, and it’s all they can afford. But still Zimbabweans are ambivalent and disparaging “We want real money, not zhing-zhong,” taxi driver Jourbet Buthelezi, referring to the pejorative term Zimbabweans use for sub-standard Chinese goods.
