Manama: Journalists will start celebrating Bahraini Press Day on March 1 starting next year, the state minister for information affairs has said.
The day celebrations will be an opportunity to pay tribute to all media people in the kingdom in recognition of their work and dedication.
King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa in a statement on May 3 called for selecting a day for the Bahraini press as “an occasion to honour the national press and pay tribute to journalists and media persons for their patriotic efforts and noble mission.”
“We have consulted with several parties and agreed that the Bahraini Press Day should be celebrated on March 1 since the first newspaper to be issued in Bahrain was printed in March 1939,” Sameera Ebrahim Bin Rajab, the state minister for information affairs, said.
She was speaking at a media forum organised by the Information Affairs Authority (IAA) to mark 75 years since the first newspaper, The Bahrain News, was issued in Arabic in Bahrain.
The first newspaper in English, the Gulf Mirror, was introduced in 1971.
Bahrain today has five national dailies in Arabic and two in English.
Efforts to amend the Press Law issued in 2002 are being exerted by media professionals and some lawmakers.
A draft has been referred to the Council of Representatives, the elected chamber of the bicameral parliament, but no date has yet been fixed for the debate although the legislative term is weeks from the end.
MP Sawsan Taqawi, one of the lawmakers who have been pushing for the adoption of the new press law, said that she was confident there was enough time to look into the draft.
“There is a need to move up promptly with the press law draft that had been referred by the government to the Council of Representatives months ago,” he said.
“There is sufficient time for the parliamentary committee and the parliament to adopt the new law through holding an extraordinary session and then refer it to the Shura Council, particularly that the provisions in the new law do not differ in their core from a draft that the competent committee has already approved,” she said.
Earlier attempts to amend the law were resisted by conservative MPs who objected to giving journalists more privileges and leeway than to average citizens, insisting that prison terms for instance should not be excluded from the draft.