AMMAN (JT) - Around 21 local daily and weekly newspapers on Sunday said they decided to publish a unified statement in protest against the reprinting of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad in 17 Danish newspapers. In a statement issued yesterday, the newspapers said their response will be professional and objective and constitutes the first […]

Here is a selection of my delicious picks: a few interesting articles/links from across the Net.
- Robert Fisk recalls his first meeting with assassinated Hizballah commander, Imad Mougnieh, in 1991.
- Arab information ministers have met in Cairo to endorse an Arab League charter, which allows host countries to annul or suspend the licence of any […]

It’s a scary time to be a journalist in Jordan these days. Working in the media sector, my feeling is that semi-independent media is making an attempt of becoming more liberalized, and the state response to such efforts has not been kind. It seems we are now leaving the era of the standard verbal harassment, […]

The Jordan Center for Social Research has conducted another poll, about 6 months after its first horrifying one. As before, I’ll run down the results as mentioned in a Jordan Times article, to spare you the excessive reading.
According to the poll:
- 64.8% of Jordanians see the Kingdom as generally being on the right […]

Brought to you by JPA President, Tareq Momani, in a Jordan Times article:
…But Jordan Press Association President Tareq Momani disagreed with the results of RWB’s index. He said Jordan stands at a position of “relative freedom of press”, explaining that on a scale of one to one hundred, the Kingdom would be around the 50s.
Me? […]

Parliamentary elections are officially up and running now. The first two days of candidate registration saw 916 names and as Lina points out, 15.8% of which are women. That’s a pretty decent percentage in my case, considering that the majority of that number are from fairly conservative cities like Irbid and Kerak. Although it’s yet […]

An anti-corruption group says three Arab states are among a dozen worldwide where corruption has seen a significant increase in the past year.
The Arab nations named by Transparency International were Jordan and the Gulf states of Bahrain and Oman.
The Arab countries with the least perceived corruption were Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. [BBC] and […]

Stepping out of a car and walking up the street towards yet another interview the other day, my boss tells me: “there has never been a worse time to be a writer in Jordan.”
Its statements like this that tend to fester.
I don’t consider myself a journalist. I don’t have a degree in journalism. Never went […]

Mohannad Al-Khatib leaves ATV.

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So a few weeks back I made a wise ass remark on my blog about Pulp Magazine. Now the record should show that I did in fact dedicate the bulk of my post towards a positive review of the publication. Nevertheless, I think they were annoyed with one particular remark which they chose to […]

Mark Glaser recently interviewed our friend Ramsey from 7iber, which was quite an honor I think. However, the piece got me thinking about the state of citizen journalism in Jordan; both in terms of its successes and failures. In the comments section of Marks’ post, Ethan Zuckerman co-founder of Global Voices, noted that 7iber is […]

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AMMAN (JT) - A piece of legislation praising Jordan’s July 31 municipal elections passed the US House of Representatives Wednesday, a statement by a US lawmaker’s office said.
The resolution, introduced by Congressman Brian Baird (D-WA) and co-sponsored by Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, commends the Kingdom for holding free […]

A few nights ago I was watching the popular Al-Jazeera ‘debate’ show, “The Opposite Direction” (as translated). On the show there was a debate about democracy, specifically with regards to the posed question of whether modern democracies suffered from a stranglehold by leaders/dictators. Bush and Blair were made examples of.
One of the panelists claimed that […]

So here’s how it played out: After weeks and weeks of rumors that fuel prices would be going up (rumors that usually prove to be true), the Prime Minister announced yesterday that no such thing would happen. Mind you, the rumors were in fact first started by the Jordanian media.
But in the same pitch, Deputy […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
Nancy held a press conference a few hours before her concert at the Radisson Sass in Amman, Jordan. As she was talking about her participation in the Jerash Festival and everything was going as planned, an Israeli Journalist from ‘ Yadiot Ahranot’ newspaper disrupted and asked Ajram a […]