Dahlia El Zein/CPJ Middle East and North Africa Research Associate

CPJ Middle East and North Africa Research Associate Dahlia El Zein, a Lebanese native who grew up in Cairo, received her master’s degree in Arab studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. She speaks Arabic fluently and has traveled widely in the Middle East.

Tunisian journalists from Assabah call for more freedom at a protest in Tunis on September 11, 2012. (AFP/Khalil)

Receding hopes for press freedom in Tunisia

These days, press freedom in Tunisia feels ever more distant. Many journalists believed that media freedoms, which were virtually nonexistent under former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, would grow after his ouster. During the aftermath of the December 2010 uprising, an independent press blossomed and special commissions were set up to reform the media sector.…

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Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference in Cairo on Saturday. (AP/Brendan Smialowski)

Egypt’s state-run media threatened by Shura move

The first test for the future of press freedom in Egypt since President Mohamed Morsi took office is not going well.

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CPJ
King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa's government breaks a promise to allow an international mission to assess free expression in Bahrain. (AP/Hasan Jamali)

Breaking pledge, Bahrain bars free expression mission

Reneging on a promise made just weeks earlier, Bahraini authorities have denied visas to representatives of several free expression organizations who planned to travel to the kingdom next week to assess press and free speech conditions. CPJ is among several organizations that have signed a joint letter to Bahrain’s director of human rights organizations condemning the action.…

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This image from a March 13 YouTube video is said to show regime forces shelling the restive Idlib province. The video was shot by a local videographer. (AFP/YouTube)

In Syria, killing the messenger hasn’t killed the message

A report on the first anniversary of the Syrian uprisingWeeks of sporadic protests seeking government reform burst into full-fledged unrest on March 15, 2011, when thousands of demonstrators gathered in four Syrian cities. Within days, authorities had cut off news media access to Daraa, a center of the unrest, beginning a sustained effort to shut…

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President al-Assad (AP)

The ‘new’ Syrian media law is nothing new

On August 28, President Bashar al-Assad approved a new media law that purportedly upholds freedom of expression and bans the arrest of journalists. Yet less than a week later, on Saturday, a Syrian journalist and contributor to the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat was arrested, CPJ reported. Just two days before the endorsement of the law, Syrian…

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