Press crunch

By Salama A Salama

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The national press is in dire straits. Nominally run by the Shura Council and the Higher Press Council, the national press is in a unique position -- state-owned but pretending not to be. With the country going through the doldrums of change, with reform that brought more controversy than relief, the national press is reeling under buffeting winds.

It had to happen. For years, legal skirmishes have erupted within the national press only to be swept under the carpet. Lately, financial problems emerged, either because of mismanagement or because its publications -- run by government loyalists -- forgot how to stay abreast of the times. Dependent on the state for cash, national newspapers lost their independence, stagnated, and forgot how to keep a safe distance from the authorities.

As a new generation started to rise within National Democratic Party (NDP) ranks, political and economic reform picked up pace, and it was not long before some started thinking of infusing new blood into our media. Many people see the national press as an arm of the state, just as the police and the army. Many wanted the finances and administration of the national press fixed. Since we're fixing the banks, why not the press while we're at it?

When you have no idea of how mammoth-like some of our national press institutions have grown, you may think it's easy to turn them around. Many thought that with the referendum in progress, and presidential and parliamentary elections coming up soon, the time was right to replace heads of press institutions, although all of them are quite fond of the regime. Reforming the media, some thought, may be a way to make the regime look good, subtle and sophisticated.

Two things accelerated the call for change: first, the pressure exercised by the relatively free satellite media and second, the emergence of dozens of independent papers. Satellite television stations, with their no-nonsense style, have run circles around the discredited national press, forcing down its circulation. And the opposition press, expressing itself without the usual restraints of the official media, drew away readers who appreciated the freshness of insight, the sarcasm of tone, the talent of young and independent writers, and the willingness to expose corruption and hypocrisy and poke fun at the regime.

The national press has become a shadow of its former self, a heavy beast too heavy to move, too slow to maintain the reader's attention. Even government officials must have felt uneasy about the recent campaign to sell the referendum. And they are likely to feel more so as the summer goes by.

There is no question that the press is in need of radical reform. Such reform should have happened years ago. The only thing that kept it from happening is that the regime wanted to have the press at its beck and call.

And yet reform calls for careful thinking and some insight into the way free press works. Of course we need to update the finances and administration of the national press, but we need also to address the questions of modernisation and ownership. We need to abolish imprisonment in publishing offences. And we need to let the Journalists' Syndicate do its job.

It is not enough to change the heads of the press institutions. People with little aptitude and questionable leadership have been named as possible candidates, for no other reason than they have the trust of the regime or the security services. This would be the death of the national press, which after all are institutions with solid pedigree. If weakened further, the national press would have no chance of competing with regional satellite stations and the emerging independent press. Already, the latter are much closer to the hearts and minds of the public.