INRIC looking at means to make TAP news agency a public service

The National Authority for the Reform of Information and Communication INRIC looked on Friday at means to change the status of Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP) news agency from a governmental media service to a public media service. At a meeting held with attendance of several journalists and staff of the news agency, INRIC President Kamel Labidi said that this issue had been raised after the revolution notably as regards all the government media services, stressing the need to free the media from state supervision and any political adherence. He spoke in this regard of the experiences of several countries which lived through the same transitional process as Tunisia in matters of organising news agencies, quoting in this respect the experiences of Poland, the Czech Republic and South Africa. Furthermore, he reckoned that it is necessary to ensure the participation of TAP news agency staff to the working out of the final report on this project, saying the latter should meet their expectations. The report is scheduled to be completed by the end of next December, he affirmed. According to the attending TAP journalists and staff, the news agency needs a new structural, administrative and editorial organisation that takes into account the challenges of media competitiveness. They also called for the separation of the management and the editorial staff within the news agency, the further training of its human resources and the recruitment of young skills.