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Tunisia: 80% of Media Companies Threatened with Disappearance

The media in Tunisia have never been in such bad shape as they are today. This sector is economically devastated and completely abandoned by the State, which is in no hurry to carry out the necessary reforms.

It was the president of the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) who issued this alert, during his participation in a meeting organized by the SNJT and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), in collaboration with the associations Journalism and Citizenship and Journalists Without Borders, this Sunday, September 8, 2024, on the theme “How to support the quality press?” .

“The sector is suffering today in Tunisia from abandonment, impoverishment, marginalization and intimidation. It needs to be deeply reformed, but the government is knowingly letting it sink,” says Dabbar, who deplores the absence of regulatory bodies, particularly for audiovisual information, since the marginalization of the Independent High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (Haica) and its replacement by the Independent High Authority for Elections (Isie).

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The absence of the HAICA is now being heavily felt in the midst of the campaign for the presidential election on October 6, Dabbar believes. This election is also the first that the Tunisian media are covering in the absence of a regulatory body, under the direct control of the electoral commission and under the threat of recourse to Decree Law No. 54, which has led to the imprisonment and legal proceedings of several journalists and civil society actors, which has created a climate of fear in newsrooms and pushed journalists to self-censorship, Dabbar also noted.              

Citing the findings of a recent study conducted by the SNJT and which will be published before the end of this year, Zied Dabbar indicated that 80% of media companies will soon close their doors due to the financial difficulties they encounter and the pressures of all kinds they face, while the public is increasingly looking for information on social networks where lies, disinformation and manipulations of all kinds abound.

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