Qatar among top three in media freedom

Source ::: The Peninsula/ bySatish Kanady Doha • Qatar has been placed among the three top countries in Arab region that enjoy the maximum freedom of the press in a survey. It has also been rated as the only Arab country where information is available to the media at a ‘very high level’.

The annual report released by Amman Centre for Human Rights Studies (ACHRS), a member of the Federation of Human Rights Centres in the Arab world, has placed Qatar after Mauritania and Kuwait as the top countries that offer maximum freedom to the media in the Arab region. The report is the result of a survey conducted among journalists in the region. Questionnaires were distributed, ranging from 10 to 15, in every Arab country including Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, and Yemen.

Qatar and Kuwait topped the list of countries that imposed minimum censorship when compared to other Arab nations. The report says that press reporters are tried before civil courts in most Arab countries at a rate of 72.22 percent. They are tried by military and civil courts, depending on the nature of crimes, in five Arab countries at a rate of 27.78 per cent. Unlike many other Arab countries, Qatar does not have an honour charter for journalists. The honour charter assesses the reporters' degree of compliance with the charter that ranges from 'very good' to 'zero' point.

The study revealed that the laws in all Arab countries give the media the right to criticize the performance of civil servants provided that evidence is submitted and that the press was acting out of goodwill. Qatar is among the few Arab countries that does not discriminate newspapers, positively or negatively, when releasing government advertisements.

While Libya has been ranked 'very low' in press freedom compared to other Arab countries, the rate of press freedom in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Syria has been ranked ‘low’. The questionnaire consisted of 26 direct questions. The aim of these questions was to assess the level of press freedom from the legal and professionals standpoints. The questions included 10 indicators to measure the degree of press freedom in each state from the point of view of the respondent. The respondent was given the free option to assess the weight of the indicator on a scale of 1 to 10 degrees. Degree one meant the lowest rank and degree 10 meant the highest rank.