On November 22, 2011, the editorial board of Jordanian
newspaper “Al-Arab Al-Yawm” resigned. Editor-in-Chief Fahad Khitan,
Board Chairman Taher Odwan, and Head of the economics news department Salameh Al-Darawi
submitted their resignation over differences in editorial policies with the
newspaper's new owner Elias Jreissat.
“Our decision is not sudden; it is the result of
differences in perspectives between the editorial management and the visions of
the new owner over the last four months. We strongly believe that the
procedures carried out by Jreissat are unacceptable and affect both the
reputation and the identity of the newspaper. We tried to inform the owner
several times of our position towards these measures but our efforts were
vain”, Al-Darawi said in an interview with SKeyes’ correspondent.
“Many changes that we totally disapprove of took
place. The modification of the slogan for example is definitely a violation of
the newspaper’s identity. Pages dealing with important issues were replaced by
commercial pages and the owner often interfered in an indirect way. We decided
to submit our resignation because we refuse to be part of this policy and work
in this inappropriate environment”, Al-Darawi added.