A recently released survey of press freedom around the world found Israel’s press to be the freest in the Middle East and praised Israel’s treatment of foreign reporters.
It noted that Israel’s treatment of its foreign press corps offered a model for war reporting.
But the International Press Institute’s (IPI) annual report, summarized in the Feb. 14 issue of Editor and Publisher magazine, indicated problems in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian press.
After hearing rumors of a cooperative Jordanian-Israeli secret effort to repress Palestinian newspapers in the territories in June, IPI sources investigated and found Jordan suggested the crackdown to Israel. Jordan reportedly hoped to thereby regain a foothold in the territories, according to the report.
Israel closed two Palestinian newspapers, Al-Mithaq and Al-Ahd, in August for allegedly printing the views of Palestinian radicals.
In November, Israel ordered the deportation of A-Sha’ab editor Akram Haniya. The Israelis charged that the newspaper was PLO-sponsored and that Haniya himself was active in the El Fatah terrorist organization.
JORDAN ALTERNATED
In other Mideast countries, the IPI found considerably less press freedom. Jordan alternated between severe press restrictions and periods of declared relaxation of the controls. Jordan blacklisted some foreign journalists for various articles and arrested several foreign journalists for reporting on demonstrations and vote-tampering.
The IPI report also noted that some local journalists, primarily Palestinians, were prohibited from writing for any newspapers, and that the security police confiscated the passport of one after she wrote articles considered objectionable.
Although media attention focussed on Lebanon during 1986, news agencies shied away from sending reporters into the battle zone in the face of intensified kidnappings and terror. As a result, many agencies relied on reports from Cyprus.
An unspecified number of foreign correspondents were kidnapped, threatened and murdered last year. The IPI report also noted that the warring factions in Lebanon, including Israel, all had interests in shielding their maneuvers from the foreign press.
STATE CONTROL BY SAUDIS
Newspapers in Saudi Arabia are subject to total state and religious authority which, in one of its most extreme controls, banned throwing newspapers in the garbage because they frequently reprinted verses from the Koran, the IPI reported. No criticism of the ruling family is permitted and Islamic law must be observed.
The report recounted that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak extended the country’s emergency laws for two years.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
