Algeria TV with Islamist tie starts from diaspora

Reuters ^ | Friday, December 16, 2011 | ed by Alison Williams

[SunkenCiv]

A UK-based satellite television channel with a link to Algeria's banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) said it would start broadcasting to north Africa on Friday to give viewers what it called objective news coverage and diverse opinions.

Al Magharibia is the second television service with links to Algeria's radical Islamist FIS to start up from the diaspora in as many months, as Algerian Islamists inspired by the success of Islamist parties elsewhere in north Africa in the wake of the "Arab Spring" seek to push for political change at home.

Al Magharbiyia said in a statement it aimed to "weave links between the peoples of the Maghreb and to contribute to giving citizens the right to access credible news ... and offering a forum permitting the expression of various opinions, contradictory though they may be".

The statement by editor in chief Salim Salhi made no mention of who was financing the service. But an official of the channel, who declined to be identified because of what he described as the sensitivity of the topic, said the channel was supported by a number of north African businessman.

Among them was Oussama Abbasi, a son of Qatar-based FIS leader Abbasi Madani, the official said.

In the early 1990s, Islamists under the banner of the outlawed FIS took leadership of street riots and pushed the government to widen political freedoms and liberty of the press.

But the army cancelled elections in 1992 which the FIS looked set to win, plunging Algeria into a vortex of violence that killed at least 150,000 according to independent estimates.

[SunkenCiv]

Algerian journalists protest (AFP/File)

Algeria adopts controversial media law -- The law promises press freedom but also lists 12 areas in which journalists must tread carefully to avoid undermining Algeria's national identity, sovereignty and security and the country's economic interests... Media workers voiced disappointment over the bill, which was among reforms promised by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April in response to a wave of popular protest that was part of the Arab Spring... Outside the assembly, members of the Initiative for the Dignity of Journalists staged a protest against the law and urged Bouteflika to review it in cooperation with the media industry. The new bill includes 130 articles, among them a provision to open up television to the private sector. Algeria now has five TV and five national radio channels, as well as 47 local radios, all owned by the state.

[SunkenCiv]

Three card monte continues.

http://www.starafrica.com/en/news/detail-news/view/algeria-adopts-controversial-media-law-208705.html