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.