Algerian communication minister to Echorouk: cooperation with journalists is necessary

Algerian communication minister Azzedine Mihoubi said, in an interview to Echorouk, the government’s program includes a series of measures meant to develop audiovisual media and written press.

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• Former communication minister Abderrachid Boukerzaza launched a project as part of the journalist’s law. How do you assess this and have you given up this project?
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• As far as journalists are concerned, I believe that we are bounded to permanent cooperation and maintain communication between the State’s institutions and the sector.
• The most important point is training which can improve the Algerian press performance. According to my own experience, I can say that correspondent reporters are the most concerned ones because most of defamation cases touch them.
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• Many journalists are asking the government to ban prison sentence against them. What do you think about this issue?
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• Such issue must be handled by the justice ministry. As far as we are concerned, we are working on reinforcing the Algerian press experience by deepening its professionalism. As much as newspapers are professional, they exclude those justice-related issues.
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• Months ago, media reports said the government is planning to ban the newspapers’ debts to presses. Is that true or false?
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• I have never heard about that. Newspapers are commercial and economic enterprises. Because of that, commercial rules which manage their relation with presses will still exist.
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• But public presses are complaining about those debts?
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• Presses have rights to the publishers and mechanisms to claim their rights. Because of that, there is no problem in this regard. On the other hand, some newspapers are complaining of not receiving their money from the advertisement agency which are complaining of the same thing. It is a circle and we are trying to get off of it by involving everyone in a comprehensive settlement. Then, we would move to another step to focus on how to improve services.
• Is the government planning to reconsider all the legislative system of the advertisement sector?
• The idea of updating those laws exists and there are many proposals meant to make those enterprises more flexible.