Ben Ali, Zine el-Abidine (1936–)

Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has been the president of Tunisia since being elected on November 7, 1987. Ben Ali, the chairperson of the Democratic Constitutional Rally (formerly Neo-Destour party) was elected by a landslide in 1994 and 1999, and in 2004, he was reelected to a fourth 5-year term with nearly 95% of the vote. During these election campaigns, Tunisia's voters do not have the right to any independent news or information. The information they have been offered in the Tunisian media was filtered, controlled, and partial.

Ben Ali's iron grip on state and privately owned media, his wide-ranging crackdown on journalists, and his instrumental use of the Tunisian media for his propagandist objectives have made him one of the predators of press freedom according to ...