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Right now there is no internet censorship. I’m against censorship. But in case there is a call for the comeback of censorship, it should be based on legal texts. And for the moment there are no such texts for the Internet in Tunisia. The goal of the agency after the revolution is guaranteeing net neutrality. When we say net neutrality we should not care about the content. Again we do not prefer Internet legislation because we are aware its risks

If there is to be Internet control in Tunisia, this control should be smart, transparent and for security reasons. The agency, used to carry out such control secretly. Today we are advocating absolute transparency. It would be better if a new public agency would be established and take charge of such a task. The ATI cannot guarantee internet neutrality and supervise the Internet at the same time. That is a conflict. This is my personal view as the legal representative of the ATI.

According to the information that I have; the Tunisian Agency for External Communication [known by its French acronym as the ATCE] was involved in taking such decisions (…) the ATCE had important transactions with the ATI. But these transactions were not documented as practices of censorship, but as website surveillance. But there is nothing documented that proves there were censorship related transactions between the two agencies. The former ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, (now dissolved, and known by its French acronym the as RCD) , the presidential palace and the security apparatus, might have been involved in such practices too. I don’t know exactly. There are no documents that reveal exact names and parties.

Aux dires des témoins de l’époque, le chef de l’Etat tunisien entretenait un rapport très ambivalent avec «sa création», l’ATCE. Elle faisait régulièrement office de punching-ball, et le président, dans ses moments de colère, ne cessait de répéter qu’elle avait échoué dans le domaine de la communication politique. En même temps, Ben Ali se refusait obstinément à changer sa manière de faire, rechignait à s’exprimer, refusait les interviews, et refusait que d’autres ne parlent à sa place.

«Avec internet, les réseaux sociaux et l’explosion des chaînes satellitaires, tout décalage entre l’image et la réalité est durement sanctionné. Le public international ne peut plus être dupe. La communication devient propagande si elle n’arrive plus à expliquer les réalités de façon intelligente, crédible et moderne. Il ne sert à rien d’accabler les agences étrangères qui ont travaillé pour son compte. Une agence ne peut pas inventer ses propres éléments de langage en matière de communication politique, ces éléments émanent de l’autorité politique. C’est encore plus vrai dans le cas d’une agence de communication officielle. Il ne faut pas confondre messager et message.»

Jridet announced his intentions to start the hunger strike on May 3, on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day, and asserted that unfair distribution of paid public advertisements and other announcements was the main reason for the the action. “Favoritism, party affiliation, and political loyalty are still governing the process of attribution of public advertisements,” he said.

After the revolution, the ATCE was abolished and no other body was created to take over the allocation of public announcements to different media outlets. “Today, we are back to same old practices of the ATCE…The most obvious example is that Al Fajr, [the newspaper of the Ennahdha Party] takes a larger share of public ads, and needless to ask about why,” Jridet told Tunisia Live

report charged the media advertising sector in Tunisia with “complete absence of ethical rules and codes of conduct.”

information revealed in an archive has disqualified candidates at the last minute

“It has to be a capable body,” said Manssar, “because it is very powerful and has the authority to shut down a station.”

Ultimately, the Presidency believes that the authority to appoint the membership of HAICA is the President’s alone. After the establishment of HAICA, though, the President would play no role in regulating the media and would not impinge on its freedom, said Manssar.

maintenance of the pre-revolutionary media landscape: No new TV station has been allowed. Just as no daily newspaper has emerged. New titles are edited by political parties and appear as weeklies, most of which incorporate the standard of the tabloid press. After a 9-days hunger strike by Radio Kalima’s manager, Omar Mistiri, twelve regional radios out of 74 candidates were finally selected in late June by the National Authority for Information and Communication Reform (INRIC), a temporary media advisory board. Now, the selected radios are waiting for the governmental permission. At the institutional level, the disappearance of the Communication Ministry does not lead, right now, to more media autonomy. Pre-revolutionary media managers are mainly the same: CEOs, Editors and Chairmen of Board moved from flattery of the ousted president and his system to a doubtful celebration of the “revolution”. In the state-owned media, the turnover of managers is conducted without any transparency just like under the dictatorship. Changes look more like a consequence of power balance between the different clans in the current government than a nascent process towards a democratic media system.

field reporting, which was longtime banned from or depreciated in the official media

The legal status of old private media, especially those belonging to the former president family, is still unclear. Some of them are under jurisdictional managers, but INRIC excluded them for the moment from any ethical obligations. Hannibal TV, owned by a relative to Leila Trabelsi, was involved in many ethical infringements to the Ethical Code like slandering or fake news, before and particularly after the revolution. Larbi Nasra, the Hanibal TV owner, seems to play a political role by receiving political leaders and airing many reports about his own charitable actions. Fethi Houidi, Information Minister under Ben Ali, is still Nessma TV’s CEO. Moez Sinaoui, former Nessma PR man, was nominated as the Interim Prime Minister’s spokesman