The Freedom House reflects reality

The Middle East and North Africa Freedom House ratings for 2010 from least to most censored according to freedomhouse.org.

1. Israel
2. Kuwait
3. Lebanon
4. Egypt
5. Jordan
6. Algeria
7. Iraq
8. Morocco
9. Qatar
10. Bahrain
11. Oman
12. United Arab Emirates
13. Yemen
14. Saudi Arabia
15. Syria
16. IOT/PA [Israeli Occupied Territory/ Palestinian Authority]
17. Tunisia
18. Iran
19. Libya

The press in the nations listed above have a strict standard of censorship and freedom. Israel is the only country considered "free" in the MENA region. Kuwait, Lebanon and Egypt are considered "partially free" and the remaining 16 nations are considered not free.

For Iran, this means that the media is completely censored by the government. During the 2009 presidential bid of Mohammed Khamtami, many websites and news articles were blocked from the Iranian people.

Yaarinews.com, Yaan.ir, and Khatami.ir were three of the websites blocked during his running.

Why were these sites blocked?

According to Behrouz Shojaei, editor for one of the sites listed above noted the dispute between Khatami and Ahmadinejad as the reasoning.

"At midday, we learned that our Web sites have been blocked," Shojaei said. "Closing down our Web sites means hard-liners are not going to tolerate Khatami challenging Ahmadinejad."

The control the government has in daily news-media life is very prominent and easy to detect in Iran as well as other MENA nations. It is sad knowing that the people aren't given the proper information to choose their government. Although there are elections, it is still controlled because the people are given the information by the government itself.