Reporters Without Borders have released their 2007 world survey of freedom of the press. There are no real surprises to be found within its pages. The Middle East still fares relatively badly as do many other countries. The situation in Iraq is especially bad:
Local and foreign media and 65 journalists and their assistants were killed in 2006. Two were foreigners - Paul Douglas, of the US network CBS, and his soundman James Brolan - and the rest Iraqis.
Local journalists living among the population have no special protection and are frontline targets. More and more of them are taking refuge in Western embassies in Baghdad or in neighbouring countries and applying for political asylum. Their work with the foreign (especially English-speaking) media exposes them to Iraqi armed groups that see them as spies.
When articulating their vision of reform or the model Islamic state, Islamists rarely speak of freedom of press. This may, of course, be an oversight as certainly there are much bigger fish of freedom to fry in the Muslim world, such as the freedom not to be visited by a death squad in hospital or sodomised by a policeman’s nightstick; but it does raise a question: is freedom of the press considered as crucial to the functioning of an honest and accountable Islamic state as it is to a secular democracy?
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I would imagine the question would be related to Hisbah, and the role that Hisbah plays in curbing abuses by the state. If that’s the case, then there would definitely need to be a free press. Sensationalism and quack-journalism though kind of defeat the purpose and tend to rile of the masses against the government, instead of inviting discourse and debate as to the Gov’t’s policies. That would mean the the Gov’t would have to allow debate, but they don’t because you need a free press to voice it, which …etc etc … you get the point
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