MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A rebel coalition overthrew a repressive regime in Syria last December, and now, after decades of surveillance and control, Syrians are cautiously testing the newly expanded boundaries for free expression. But as NPR's Emily Feng reports, fresh constraints are emerging.
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EMILY FENG, BYLINE: The night is young and the crowd is raucous here in this stand-up comedy bar in Damascus' old city.
(LAUGHTER)
OMAR JAYAB: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Comedian Omar Jayab gets on stage and he starts ripping one-liners. He is unsparing...
JAYAB: (Speaking Arabic).
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FENG: ...Going after the former regime run by the Al-Assad family but also the rebel fighting group that is now a major party in Syria's new interim government.
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FENG: And the audience loves it. I speak to Jayab backstage. He says the room for free expression has gotten so much better after the regime fell.
JAYAB: Because now we can do more political jokes that we couldn't use to do. Now we can do it freely.
FENG: I ask him if he senses there are any limits to what he can say.
JAYAB: We're trying to see where is the limit that we can speak, but for right now, we're speaking whatever we want.
FENG: For now - and he might discover those limits soon. There are signs already that HTS, as head of Syria's interim government, wants control over information.
UNIDENTIFIED NEWS PRODUCER: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: And as this news producer with a prominent broadcaster tells us, outlets that operated under the old regime must now first post the drafts of all new stories in an online chat to be cleared by a government official. A second manager at another major outlet confirmed this. Like all the journalists who NPR spoke to for this piece, they asked that we not use their names for fear of reprisals from the HTS government.
UNIDENTIFIED NEWS PRODUCER: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: She says HTS officials have also taken over her outlet's social media channels to post their content. Reading horoscopes aloud on radio has long been popular programming, but two outlets told NPR that is now banned for running counter to Islamist tenets.
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: A second Syrian journalist explains a major broadcaster has also been banned from playing most music and television series because that, too, is viewed disapprovingly by some Islamist hard-liners. And when her outlet tried to interview the new government's officials...
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: ...They said they would only speak to male anchors, not female journalists. Two separate journalists also say the new HTS government has been only granting access to their official events to their affiliated media outlets. At another major news organization, the government has replaced the director with their own official and put nearly 20% of the current staff on paid leave.
UNIDENTIFIED NEWS PRODUCER: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: The broadcast producer says the new government of Syria is pushing aside journalists it wrongly assumes were loyal to the former regime, which she denies. She says, in fact, they were victims too, forced to follow the old regime's diktats. Many of them are now hoping this current government does not fall back into those old habits. Emily Feng, NPR News, Damascus. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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