By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Feb 25 2000 (IPS)

As Iran’s liberal press moves to maintain the momentum of the victory of pro-reform candidates in last week’s parliamentary elections, journalists in the neighbourhood are looking for lessons.

The freedom enjoyed by Iran’s newspapers ever since an obscure pro-reform cleric, Mohammed Khatami, scored an upset victory in presidential polls in 1997 has made international headlines.

Media openness in Iran stands in contrast with the experience of many other Gulf countries, where the hand of the state is omnipresent. But there are visible signs of change, more pronounced in countries like Kuwait and Qatar.

While Iran’s liberal newspapers were building public opinion in favour of the reformists’ agenda in the run-up to the polls, a clash over press freedom between Kuwait’s cabinet and parliament almost brought down the government.

In the tiny sheikhdom of Qatar, Al Jazeera television has built up a large audience in the Arab world ever since it went on the air three years ago. Its probing news and commentaries have redefined the boundaries of journalistic inquiry — and has annoyed several governments.

Saudi Arabia’s press rarely ventures beyond officially sanctioned positions and newspapers in Oman and Bahrain are careful to tread the middle ground. Dubai in the United Arab Emirate (UAE) recently established a press club to promote itself as a regional media centre and the country’s journalists have formed a union “to preserve press freedom”.

Kuwait was caught in one of its worst political crises earlier this week when some legislators demanded the cabinet’s resignation over a controversy involving press freedom.

The government was believed to have wanted to close ‘Al- Siyassah’ and ‘Al-Watan’ newspapers for publishing a story that the emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, had issued a decree ordering a 20 to 35 percent pay raise for army personnel.

MPs launched scathing attacks on the government, accusing it of throttling the press. Prime Minister Sheikh Saad al-Sabah, who is also the crown prince, and his cabinet immediately threatened to resign in “indignation at derogatory statements directed at ministers by MPs”.

Intervening to defuse the crisis, the emir reversed the ban order before it could be formally announced.

The chief editors of Kuwait’s five daily Arabic newspapers published a joint statement censuring Information Minister Saad bin Teflah and said he should have resigned in protest against the cabinet’s move.

The editors said they “feared for the march of Kuwaiti press” as long as the cabinet and the information minister retained the right to withdraw the licenses of newspaper or suspend them.

A court released on bail two editors of ‘Al-Siyassah’ who were detained for publishing the story, which the government insisted was “fabricated”.

In the UAE, too, newspapers are venturing into uncharted waters such as uncovering instances of corruption and ineptitude among civil servants. Policy differences between the country’s health minister and a senior woman official in the ministry recently spilled over into the newspapers.

Government officials, many of them members of the ruling families, have urged newspapers to come out with “constructive criticism”.

The region’s moves towards media openness may have been inspired by Jazeera television. However, the search to redefine the ground rules of journalism in a region where conformity is often preferred over creativity has prompted stern reactions from official quarters.

Jazeera bureaus were temporarily ordered closed in Kuwait and Jordan because the station carried programmes deemed offensive by those governments.

Jazeera managers say the station has also struggled to attract advertisements because of political pressure exerted by Arab governments on major business groups.

Some commentators have questioned whether the Kuwaiti experience would help to promote a freer press. “Whether or not the cabinet had overstepped its legal boundaries is a separate matter altogether and would need to be handled as such,” UAE- based political analyst Hamoud Salhi said.

“At any rate, swatting at the government alone hardly seems fair; the newspapers certainly bear some responsibility here as well. Tying up the cabinet with two days’ of meetings and then dragging the parliament into a heated debate is excessive for a situation that could have been resolved with a mere apology.”

For others, like the editors of Kuwait’s ‘Al Qabas’ newspaper, the issue is a larger one. “The path of reform begins in government, in its mentality, in its course and mechanism of action. Currently it is all words and no action. It is no longer possible to continue down the same path,” ‘Qabas’ said in a recent editorial, almost borrowing words from Iranian reformists across the Gulf.

That is perhaps why many people find Iran’s experience instructive. Hardliners in the Teheran government have struck back at newspapers they considered troublesome, often closing publications and jailing journalists on charges ranging from “disrespecting the 1979 Islamic Revolution” to “spying for foreign powers”.

But when the conservative Press Court closed down newspapers, enterprising journalists went to the reformist-led Culture Ministry for new licenses.

Editors simply changed the masthead of their publication and continued writing in favour of more political and social openness. The message they might be sending to colleagues in the region is: preserve the liberties you have before trying to expand them.

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