Building Open Societies: Freedom of the Press in Jordan and Rwanda

Abstract

Media policy plays a prominent role in nation-building, but context determines whether policymakers view that role as a positive or negative one. In Jordan, the press’s critiques of the government’s diplomatic outreach toward Israel resulted in proscriptions on, and imprisonment for, any reporting that “harmed national unity.” In Rwanda, where decade-old genocidal rants read over the radio airwaves still ring in survivors’ ears, any discussion of ethnic strife or mention of Hutus and Tutsis leads to charges of divisionism. By taking stock of each country’s contemporary history, this article considers the ways in which freedom of expression is contested, shaped, and defined by recent developments. A country’s media can be more or less “free," but without a proper understanding of that country’s history, debate over its media policy is necessarily incomplete. One issue for developing countries and the scholars who study them is the degree to which context and history are being used to justify the suppression of legitimate speech, open debate, and a properly functioning media space. Another is whether a relative conceptualization of freedom of expression can be squared with what U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called free speech’s “high purposes”: inviting dispute, creating dissatisfaction with the status quo, and moving its listeners to anger and action.

Keywords: international law, media law, communications law, comparative constitutional law