Joint action key to media reform: The case of Tunisia. Essay by Kamel Labidi, journalist, former Chair of the National Commission for Information and Communication Reform, and Co-founder of the Civilian Coalition for the Defense of Freedom of Expression.
Central argument is that: The fears and doubt that people live with under autocratic regimes often mean that attempts to protect the public interest are met with a kind of skepticism and disbelief that almost resembles defeatism. Tunisians, men and women alike, seem to have gotten rid of these feelings once and for all when past threats of exclusion, imprisonment, and exile disappeared after former President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali sought refuge in Saudi Arabia in January 2011, at the peak of an unprecedented popular uprising in the Arab world.