Part of the recent changes breezing into my world has involved discovering the music of Charbel Rouhana – such beautiful rearrangements of the greatest Arabic music coming through my headset as I try to focus away from the office buzz, and somewhat come to terms with the restlessness that has been my loyal companion lately.
I read the local news… and sigh! A lot of media-related items caught my attention last week; the first student radio station has been launched in Yarmouk University, home to Jordan’s first and only school of Journalism in a public university. Yarmouk University has known different forms of student activism, confrontations, and most recently, violence on its campus. I cannot help but wonder what form this supposedly student-run radio station will take, and to what extent students will be able to push the envelope. I’m not very hopeful though. Public universities in Jordan are not very different in their policies, and I remember my days at UJ and the short period of time I spent writing for the student monthly that was published by the Student Affairs Administration. The Dean of Student Affairs was on top of the editorial hierarchy of the newspaper, and it had to pass by him before going to print. Not only was it supposed to be controversy-free, anything that “damaged the image of the university” was duly crossed out.
In other Journalism-related items, I found an interesting piece of news about a new educational program titled “Education through the Press”, implemented by the Center for Defending the Freedom of Journalists with the Ministry of Education and the International Publishers Union, through which teachers from 12 schools in different parts of the kingdom were trained on utilizing newspapers and media sources as pedagogical tools in the classroom, to increase students’ reading skills, encourage them to use different sources of knowledge, and increase their awareness and involvement with their local community and society at large. The representative of the International Publishers Union said that the importance of using newspapers in the classroom lies in developing a critical thinking and understanding of what is relayed through the media.
This sure sounds like a very interesting project, and I think that ideas and projects of this sort deserve to be saluted, yet I’m taking everything with a grain of salt these days. As one friend of mine put it “Jordan has enough conferences and initiatives to save the world!”
I’m keeping a positive outlook though. I don’t like sounding cynical, but sometimes one cannot help it in light of what has been going on in the bigger picture of the state of free speech in this part of the world. Following the parliament’s debate regarding the Press and Publication law has been nothing short of depressing, and what’s even more depressing is that the campaign initiated by Amman Net and the Center for Defending the Freedom of Journalists to lobby for a “progressive law” and the right to access information is somewhat falling flat. We – and I mean people who have a stake in this – seem to lack the right approach to, or perhaps the critical mass for, organized advocacy.
It seems very ironic that some MPs would reject the idea of publishing licenses being issued by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and dwell on the need for a Ministry of Information as a governing body for all media entities in the country, in an era where a private citizen like myself can get together with a couple of colleagues and start an independent news website anywhere anytime.
But then again, I’d venture to say that limits to freedom of expression have little to do with existing laws and regulations, and more to do with our internal systems of self-censorship and the red lines we encircle ourselves with.
I think of Abdel-Karim Nabil, a young man 2 years younger than me, who will spend the next four years of his life in prison for daring to speak his mind in criticizing Al Azhar and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. What is more disturbing than the sentence itself is the reaction of his family and members of the public who were demanding harsher punishments – people who give themselves the right to judge others, to point fingers and to determine what someone’s ideological and spiritual belief is supposed to be.
It’s common knowledge that others out there think in a way similar to Karim but chose to keep their thoughts to themselves. Can someone sue me for the thoughts that lurk in the dark alleyways of my mind away from the public eye? Yet, simply keeping those opinions private does not nullify their existence, does not make them any more or less “legitimate”. Some people choose to speak their minds under the cover of anonymity, others choose to express these thoughts accompanied by their real names with which people in offline life and official records identify them… and then, others simply choose to filter the opinions they express and allow themselves to debate with others. For how long would the powers-that-be succeed in keeping “offensive” or “unsettling” opinions in check?! One must wonder!
I cannot entirely separate these thoughts from observations and reflections on the ongoing debate regarding the Jordan Blogs aggregator. A lot has been said there, and questioning what “freedom of speech” really means has become somewhat tiring. But I don’t want to get into that right now. Enough thoughts for one post, wouldn’t you agree? 
In irrelevant (or relevant, who is to say anyway?) news; I just got an email confirming my participation in the Documentary Filmmaking Workshop that the RFC is organizing with USC in March 
