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Censors ease up on Syrian press: New information minister encourages more critical media in a country known for its censored press. (Nicholas Blanford, 12/28/04, CS Monitor)

Syria's press has been regarded as little more than a banal mouthpiece for the state since the 1963 coup by the ruling Baath Party. The state's stranglehold on the media began to loosen in the wake of Bashar al-Assad becoming president in 2000. In 2002, the first privately owned political weekly, Abyad wa Aswad (White and Black), was granted a license and has since become a keen critic of government performance. "The general trend is for change now.... If we want this country to progress, we have to focus on the bad points," says Ayman al-Daquq, who edits the magazine.

Two years ago, satellite dishes became legal, granting Syrians access to television channels from around the world. The number of foreign magazines and newspapers distributed in Syria has almost doubled.

But the pace of change increased from October following a cabinet reshuffle. The new interior minister, Ghazi Kenaan, a former general in military intelligence, voiced what most Syrians thought when he declared the local press "unreadable."

Mr. Dakhlallah, former editor of Al-Baath, the mouthpiece of the Baath Party, began telephoning journalists and urging them to adopt a bolder approach, taking the traditionally cautious Syrian reporters by surprise.

Mr. Haydar of Al-Arabiya says that for the first time he is free to record interviews with people from banned political parties on previously taboo subjects. "They say how they want to abolish the security law, free political prisoners, see the return of exiles, and hold free elections," he says. "I don't feel the tension while working anymore. I can go on air at any moment and talk about anything."

The information minister is supervising the restructuring of some media institutions, combining the organizations that publish the Al-Baath and Al-Thawra dailies. Reporters at Tishreen have been told they can no longer copy articles straight from the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. Al-Thawra is building a fresh reputation for running hard-hitting stories on social issues.

Ministers, who once avoided the media, are now obliged to talk to the press. Two weeks ago, Mr Kenaan, the interior minister, gave a statement to the press within an hour of a bomb blast that almost killed a Palestinian militant, an unusually swift reaction from a traditionally cautious regime.

The changes are like a jolt of electricity to older reporters who are finding that holding onto their jobs will depend on future performance. "The old school [of reporters] can't understand the change. Now the good are being singled out from the bad," says Mr. al-Daquq, the editor of Abyad wa Aswad.

Just three years after 9-11 the pace of liberalization in the Middle East is so rapid that putative experts on the region can't even acknowledge it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 28, 2004 12:00 AM