GLASNOST PRECEDES THE FALL:

A media Ataturk in Syria? (Dr Sami Moubayed, January 11, 2005, Gulf News)

The "Syrian media is unreadable" were the words of Syria's new Minister of Interior Gazi Kenaan late last year. This was signalling a new attitude towards the media, unseen in Syria since the Baath Party came to power 42 years ago. From 1963 onwards, Syrians have had to cope with getting their news from the three tightly controlled state-run dailies Al Baath, Tishreen, and Al Thawra.

Syrian TV is also very selective in its coverage. For example, the events of September 11, 2001 were not broadcast on Syrian TV. The war against Afghanistan was also not covered, since it coincided with the commemoration of the October War of 1973. Syrian TV showed a ceremony celebrating the war's victories, while the world watched Al Jazeera, CNN, and other channels covering the war against Afghanistan directly from the battlefield.

Those who have presided over the media for the past four decades were afraid to take bold decisions, since red lines are not always clear in Syria.

Instead of risking their jobs, media officials simply shunned opinions different to their own, and turned a blind eye to world events, fearing that publicising them would contradict with what the government wanted to hear. In 2000, President Bashar Al Assad declared that he would accept "the opinion of the other".

Things took a new turn with the appointment of Mehdi Dakhlallah, a journalist, as Minister of Information, in 2004. First, more foreign periodicals were allowed in Syria, rising in number from 180 to 397. Dakhlallah had the courage and patience to experiment with new ideas, something which his two predecessors, the diplomats Adnan Umran (2000-2003) and Ahmad Al Hassan (2003-2004), lacked.