The National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), in a statement on Friday, called on President Kais Saied to respect the independence of the media and "stop interfering in their content".
The union called on the President of the Republic to apply the law in appointing officials at the head of public media institutions, especially the radio and television, "respect the independence of public, confiscated and private media and refrain from parachute appointments, in which the President of the Republic has basically resorted to symbols of propaganda and disinformation during the period of media blackout," according to the same statement.
President Kais Saied had indicated during his meeting on Friday at the Carthage Palace with the CEO of
Tunisian Television, Awatef Dali, that "the national television should be at the service of Tunisians and not at the service of lobbies hiding behind the curtain". He considered that "a number of programmes and the order of the news in the news bulletin of Tunisian Television (Watania 1) are to blame".
The SNJT stressed in the same statement, in response to the dialogue between President Kais Saied and the CEO of Tunisian Television, that the public media must play its primary role as a public service at the service of the state and society and express the people's demands and concerns within the framework of information and objectivity, and adopt the priorities of news, education and entertainment, and not be a propaganda tool for the ruling authorities, whatever they may be.
It called on all professional structures and regulatory bodies to publicly reject these practices and to defend the right of women and citizens to a free media that reflects different political and intellectual orientations and represents the diversity and pluralism of Tunisian society.
In this context, the union stressed that it is not the role of the executive authority to control and monitor media content, but rather that of the editorial boards within the institutions and the independent High Authority for Audiovisual Media.
It called on the staff of Tunisian Television in particular and the rest of the public media institutions in general to address these "serious practices and deviations and any attempt to use the public institution to serve the authority or any other entity," according to the text of the statement.
It considered that "the intervention of the President of the Republic is part of a context of censorship of the public media, sexism and the undermining of the principle of pluralism, diversity and objectivity", especially in Tunisian television and radio and the TAP news agency, in addition to exclusionary practices, in particular the prevention of civil society and political forces from appearing on Tunisian television, which is funded by taxpayers' money.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse