Syria's Media Witnessing Giant Change.../Daily Star, Lebanon

[Gloria]

From the new World Media Watch for December 29, 2004, up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com

The last one for 2005...let's hope the world is in better shape in 2005!
Gloria



3//The Daily Star, Lebanon Wednesday, December 29, 2004

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=11367



SYRIA’S MEDIA WITNESSING GIANT CHANGE—BUT IS IT ENOUGH?

Even the new interior minister called local papers 'unreadable'

By Nicholas Blanford
Special to The Daily Star

DAMASCUS: When Mehdi Dakhlallah wrote an article earlier in the year calling for the abolition of a clause in the Syrian constitution granting preferential treatment to the ruling Baath party, many thought he would lose his job as editor of Al-Baath newspaper.



After all, Syrian Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam responded that the constitutional clause, Article 8, was "holy" and could not be touched.



However, instead of being sacked, Dakhlallah was promoted to minister of information and since then has launched an accelerated shake-up of Syria's media.



Journalists are growing bolder as traditional red lines blur, taboos are broken and

fear of imprisonment for writing articles critical of the regime recedes.



"This is new, this is very new," said Ziad Haydar, Damascus correspondent of the

Al-Arabiyya Arabic satellite channel and Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper.



Dakhlallah's impact on media reforms was illustrated last month with the publication of an article containing unprecedented criticism of the Syrian intelligence services.

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[Dancing_Dave]

1. And how many American papers give us the low-down on OUR intell services?

Sounds like Syria may soon have a more free press than we do!