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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.”

native advertising—paid stories that look and feel like a publication’s own journalism

News providers got 20 percent of their ad revenues from native content in 2017, according to a global study of 148 publishers by the Native Advertising Institute and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. By 2021 executives expect that to increase to 36 percent

The piece is marked “sponsored” at the top, followed by a line identifying the content as “provided by” Thailand’s foreign ministry. A line at the end in smaller, fainter font states that the article was not produced by Reuters journalists. Reuters has a section on the homepage dedicated to sponsored content, and stories sponsored by the Thai government are mingled with news stories in Google search results about the topic. But research suggests that many are either oblivious to these disclaimers or do not know what they mean.

This time of year, the offices of TV production companies are usually bustling with stars conducting meetings in preparation for the upcoming Ramadan television season (which falls in May this year)

The local television scene is rife with talk about the implications of recent developments in the field, which entail an effective halt in almost all TV drama production

What we’re witnessing this year is not a marketing crisis, or a weakness in screenplays, or any of the other issues that have ailed the drama industry in the past; rather, the very existence of the industry is under unprecedented threat. The number of series being produced has plummeted, and is expected to amount to 18 series at most, the majority of which are  to be produced by Synergy, the production house owned by Tamer Morsy, head of the intelligence-affiliated Egyptian Media Group (EMG). It is the newest step in the state’s ongoing bid to monopolize all forms of media and artistic production in Egypt.

Saudi Arabia’s history with WWE, like much of its frenetic investment in sports and entertainment over the past few years, is a study in how little diplomacy is needed when you control one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in history. Using their Public Investment Fund, valued at more than $776 billion, the Saudis have effectively bought some of the world’s most loyal fan bases, bent opponents to their will and wildly shifted the economics of international sports.

In the sports world, overcoming a reputation as a global pariah — condemned by human rights organizations for alleged war atrocities and its links to the 9/11 hijackers, the imprisonment of activists and the Khashoggi assassination — has been as simple for Saudi Arabia as advancing claims of innocence or autonomy.

The Saudi Pro League has become the default destination for aging soccer legends seeking unprecedented paydays, including Cristiano Ronaldo, who reportedly is paid roughly $220 million per year to play for Al Nassr. Lionel Messi turned down a similar bounty in favor of playing in the United States. But he still agreed to promote Saudi Arabia for a reported $25 million under a contract that mandates he is not permitted to make any remarks that “tarnish” the kingdom.

We all grew up with the standard formula: journalism plays a crucial role in making western democracies work by providing citizens with the information that enables them to make informed judgments about urgent issues of general interest. Therefore, the fundamental question for those who study the western new media is: Do they in fact do what they are supposed, and claim, to do?

The crucial western capitalist context in which the news media operate in Dutch society and which they fundamentally reflect, is the same as that of British and American societies. Economic and foreign policies in the three countries are much more alike than different. The Netherlands too avowedly promotes ‘free trade’ and ‘the spread of democracy’ to less fortunate countries. In the Netherlands too, neoliberal thinking dominates politics. Journalism in the three countries is also very much alike. The ruling professional ideology is ‘objectivity.’ The media are mostly privately-owned and depend on advertising revenue. In the name of ‘freedom of the press’, the government exercises restraint, taking the position that, as much as possible, the market should decide which publications live and die. But journalists and politicians are caught in a symbiotic relationship and the PR industry exerts a lot of covert influence on journalism. It was American journalist Ben Bagdikian, who claimed in his popular The Media Monopoly , now in its sixth edition, that continuing concentration in the American media industry amounts to a de facto news monopoly. As a result, American news reflects the interests of political and economic elites. Just like in the Netherlands, where media markets are dominated by a few big corporations.

The official version of Dutch media history maintains that the partisan journalism which was prevalent until the 1970s fell far short, because it was intimately tied to political parties. In the 1970s, journalism professionalized and since then it has done more or less what it is supposed to do. But this is a very partial account. Indeed, the partisan media hardly practiced journalism as we like to see it done: acting as the watchdog of democracy. But when journalism shrugged off its political ties, the market filled the vacuum, and far from the market functioning as an ‘engine of freedom,’ to use British scholar James Curran’s words - the market in reality amounted to yet another ‘system of control,’ to cite Curran once again. The commercial media’s primary task is not to provide the population with relevant, independently-gathered information. Their primary task is to deliver readers, viewers and listeners to advertisers. As a consequence, the media in the Netherlands are owned by rich corporations and persons who have a stake in maintaining friendly ties with other corporations and also the government, for access to powerful political sources needs to be kept at all costs. No wonder that the journalistic product reflects the interests of elites. The media are the elite, also in the Netherlands, its reputation of a progressive country regarding ‘cultural’ issues like abortion and the death penalty notwithstanding. Dutch journalism thus remains far from independent, at least, if we take Jurgen Habermas’ definition seriously, whereby a public sphere ‘can only approach autonomy if it is independent from both the state and commercial interests’. 

News organisations both big and small hire these tech-savvy, often worldly young people with multidisciplinary backgrounds to ensure that, in an ever-changing media environment, their content can compete. But why is such competition necessary?

Today's media industry is still trying to find a solid revenue model.

In order for advertisers to get eyes on their products and services, they must turn to an increasingly sophisticated suite of ­­­­­- analytics tools

The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed.

The campaign also sought to mobilise Muslims against Moscow, promoting greater religious conservatism and radical ideas. To appear authentic, documents encouraged hatred of Israel.

The Information Research Department (IRD) was set up by the post-second world war Labour government to counter Soviet propaganda attacks on Britain. Its activities mirrored the CIA’s cold war propaganda operations and the extensive efforts of the USSR and its satellites.

Although the Menkaure pyramid is a part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, UNESCO said in an email that it was unaware of the project and had “written to the Egyptian authorities to ask them for more information.”

a group of archaeologists called the project “entirely unscientific” and accused those behind it of chasing publicity over legitimate archaeological inquiry. They stressed that documentation cannot occur at the same time as the excavation shown in the video.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementProceeding with the project “is tantamount to tampering with Egyptian antiquities and undermining its antiquity and history,”

On Wednesday, Mr. Khalil canceled a higher-education conference that was to launch the new online publication because of concerns about academic freedom in the United Arab Emirates, where the event was to be held this weekend. That step came less than a week after a similar move by the London School of Economics and Political Science, which canceled a conference it had planned in Dubai after Emirati authorities requested that a presentation on Bahrain, which is facing political upheaval, be dropped from the program. A scholar on Arab politics from the London institution who was to speak at the event was briefly detained at the Dubai airport and barred from entering the country

"We can't talk about upholding academic freedom and launch in Dubai. I don't think it sends the right message."

Al Fanar will start as planned on March 3. It is the first major project of the Alexandria Trust, the charity Mr. Khalil founded in 2012 to improve education in the Middle East and North Africa

I’d like to argue that Television functions as a distancing technology while social media works in the opposite direction: through transparency of the process of narrative construction, through immediacy of the intermediaries, through removal of censorship over images and stories (television never shows the truly horrific pictures of war), and through person-to-person interactivity, social media news curation creates a sense of visceral and intimate connectivity, in direct contrast to television, which is explicitly constructed to separate the viewer from the events.

the construction of the role of the anchor or the curator, and the role of content filtering.

a very surreal and disorienting experience unless one has been thoroughly conditioned into accepting them as normal. All this positions the anchor between us and the event and signals to the viewer that the event is merely something to be watched, and then you move on.

questions about the relationship between political parties and Tunisian media

He asserted that the channel will maintain editorial freedom, and emphasized that it will be a wholly Tunisian-owned enterprise

Ettounisya is a popular television station that, like most of its Tunisian competitors, devotes a large amount of airtime to political talk shows

the US has found this year that online ads on social media websites like Facebook, rather than posts, are a cost-effective way to fight the propaganda of the Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups

Facebook's detailed metrics for advertisers helps the government campaign reach its targets - people who might be groomed online by militants."Using Facebook ads, I can go within Facebook, I can grab an audience. I can pick country X, I need age group 13 to 34, I need people who liked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or any other set, and I can shoot and hit them directly with messages," he said."In some places in the world, it's literally pennies a click to do it," he said.  

Facebook, he noted, offers the government access to affordable amassed and collated user data for singling out target groups and individuals for anti-militant ads the US government runs."The best I can do right now is to have access to big data and to use the analytics tools on the social media platforms, the Facebooks and the others,"

The picture above advertises a popular Turkish soap opera – Harim Soltan (the Sultan's harem).  But there is also a satirical version (below) in which the Sultan's face has been replaced with that of Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Besides "Sultan" Bouteflika himself, it shows a few members of the president's "harem", including his brother Said, prime minister Abdelmalek Sellal and Amar Saidani, secretary general of Algeria's ruling party, the FLN ...

On October 4 last year, Algerian activist Zoulikha Belarbi posted the Photoshopped picture on Facebook with a comment saying: "I don't know when the Bouteflika soap opera will end and he will wake up from his false dream which has become a nightmare threatening the future of Algeria and her people." On October 20, police raided her family home in Tlemcen, arrested her and seized her computer, mobile phone and SIM card. She was held for 24 hours before being released under judicial supervision. "I was treated like a terrorist," she said later. Her case finally came to court last weekend, and she was fined 100,000 dinars ($905) for "undermining the president of the republic". 

Its slogan was "the voice of the voiceless", but after four decades the prestigious Lebanese daily As-Safir is in danger of falling silent, illustrating the unprecedented crisis rocking the country's media.Lebanese newspapers, long seen as a beacon of freedom in a tumultuous region, are suffering because of the country's political paralysis and a slump in funding from rival regional powers.

As-Safir's main competitor, An-Nahar, is also struggling to survive and its employees have not been paid for months."Our ink has run dry," said Talal Salman, founder and editor-in-chief of As-Safir. "The Lebanese press, a pioneer in the Arab world, is undergoing its worst crisis ever."

He blames the country's political stalemate, with existing divisions exacerbated by the war in neighbouring Syria.Two main blocs dominate Lebanon: one backed by the West and Gulf kingdoms, and the other by Iran and Syria.The rift means there have been no parliamentary elections since 2009, and lawmakers have failed for nearly two years to elect a president."Without politics, there is no media, and there is no politics in Lebanon today,"

as a journalist you have to go to official sources but most of the time they just don’t respond. I have my sources and obtain different information about corruption at the municipal level. I know those who are on the municipal council and sometimes receive information about mismanagement and corruption, but when you ask for information from other sources you get total silence.” He added: “When you write about corruption and you have checked all your facts, the newspaper doesn’t want to publish the story. Recently I did an investigative report on how a leading sports figure is involved in corruption and when I had finished it no Tunisian newspaper would publish it. Unfortunately websites and blogs do not have the same impact on readers. On them we can sometimes post articles on corruption but they do not have the same impact as daily and weekly newspapers.”

The pressure exerted by the Tunisian authorities on journalists who attempt to cover corruption has taken its toll. The editor-in-chief of one opposition newspaper said that his newspaper refrained from making accusations of corruption. “We seek compromise within the constraints imposed upon us,” he said, in a clear reference to self-censorship, although he claimed that his newspaper differed from others, which, in return for “financing,” have “changed their tune.” The editor of another opposition newspaper, who is also an MP, said his newspaper does cover corruption and mismanagement. It is possible, he said, that he is given slightly more leeway by the authorities because his political party is legal and therefore has a right to state funding. Nonetheless, his paper is put under significant pressure. Tunisia’s Agency for Exterior Communication controls public advertising – which it apportions only to newspapers it approves of. This translates into considerable financial difficulties for any newspapers that don’t toe the line.

authorities employ two broad means to prevent unfavorable news from getting out: Sometimes they employ a legal ruling banning a particular issue or issues; this was the case when his newspaper published details about a court hearing related to social protests in the south of the country, when activists were on trial. On other occasions, the authorities don’t use the law; instead plainclothes police go to the stands and order them not to sell the issue.

The decision to expose Egyptians to the show was the outcome of a protocol signed by the Chinese government and the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU), a division of Egypt's information ministry, for the express purpose of using mass media to prepare the population for a stronger alliance between the two states. China gave ERTU the rights to the program for free and paid for the translation and overdubbing. Egyptian Information Minister Duraya Sharaf al-Din, toasting the program's premiere during a visit to the Chinese embassy in Cairo, told Chinese radio that her government wants the series to instill an emotional connection with China that will popularize political and economic ties.

The show falls outside the news cycle and offers little entertainment value, but for the narrow purpose of inducing Egyptian and Tunisian youth to enroll in their local Confucius Institutes it strikes precisely the right chords. Young listeners in an unstable country with high unemployment hear that they can study Chinese for free and dramatically boost their job prospects. The show's guests manage to preempt defensive reactions from the kind of nationalistic listeners who would bristle at such an overture from a foreign power: They are assured that Egypt, too, is a great civilization and only lags behind China owing to its history of exploitation by the West. A step toward China is a step toward liberation and progress. Beijing comes across as a refreshingly hospitable destination for study abroad, moreover. Its people honor guests and reject the anti-Arab stereotypes widespread in Europe and the United States.

Who listens to such a broadcast? Unlike America's Radio Sawa or the BBC from London, CRI Arabic isn't available on local radio in the region (with the exception of what appears to be a pilot project on FM radio in the sparsely populated North African republic of Mauritania). Nor does it figure prominently among Arabic stations hyped online. One finds it advertised in venues where Arabs already curious about China are likely to go. For example, the website of the Chinese embassy in Cairo features a link on its home page, while in person the embassy's cultural attaché encourages the young people he meets to tune in. Some Confucius Institute chapters also disseminate links to prospective students as a kind of audio brochure.

The third weekly issue of Al-Wady newspaper, scheduled to hit the stands on Monday night, did not go to print, editor-in-chief Khaled al-Balshy told the privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm daily on Tuesday. He added that he did not know why. This is the second time the printing of this issue has been halted after being sent to Al-Akhbar foundation printers, Balshy told privately owned newspaper Youm7.

Al-Wady, owned by businessman Tarek al-Nadeem, had advertised its print issue on its Facebook page, revealing many heated topics.

The issue included an investigation of the controversial AIDS cure announced by the military, a revisiting of the State Security building raids that occurred in 2011, and letters from detained activists Alaa Abd El Fattah and Ahmed Maher.