AMMAN —
Local journalists interviewed by
Jordan
News concurred with the findings of a recent report conducted by the Center
for Defending Freedom of Journalists on the state of the media in the country,
which revealed, among others, that 96 percent of Jordanian journalists do not
see the government as a defender of the freedom of the press.
اضافة اعلان
The report,
titled “Under threat”, shed light on the state of the media, and on the
political, economic, and legal environment in which journalists operate, in
five
Arab countries — Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco — in
2021.
According to Jfranews journalist Ahmad Al-Ghalayini,
“the government protects the media that comply with it. Criticizing the work of
the government and revealing issues that will cause it some trouble is not
tolerated by the government.”
“Therefore, the government is rarely transparent
when speaking to journalists about certain public issues,” he said, stressing
that media freedoms, in general, will not be fully protected as long as there
is a security grip on local media.”
He also stressed that there will be “no progress,
nor protection of media freedoms as long as media professionals are not
protected”.
“The government should create an official entity to
protect media professionals, as well as an interactive platform on which to
answer journalists’ questions,” he said.
Editor-in-chief of Jo24 Basil Okoor told
Jordan
News that “the government does not support media institutions that
criticize its performance. It basically follows the approach of whoever is not
with me is against me”.
He added that “the government does not want real and
transparent media, as reflected in the laws, the latest of which saw some
tougher articles related to media freedom in the Penal Code and the
Cybercrime Law”.
“There is an official government siege of the media,
which the legislation helps strengthen, as well as means to weaken independent
institutions whose visions are not in line with the government’s policies,”
said Okoor.
“There is a dramatic decline in media freedoms, and
successive governments have been contributing to that,” he said, urging
governments to “release their grip over media institutions and amend
legislation to make it more flexible”.
According to freelance journalist
Mohammad Shamma,
“the government approach pushes journalists to exercise self-censorship”; at
the same time, journalists face many restrictions while doing their jobs,
“including difficulty accessing information”.
He urged the government to “stop toughening
restrictive media laws, banning the publication of important issues, monitoring
journalists work, including on social media”.
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