This week a court in Saana sentenced Munir Mawari, a Washington based Yemeni journalist and contributor to the weekly newspaper Al Masdar to two years in jail.

He was accused of defaming the president. His crime? To describe the president's leadership style as a "kind of weapon of mass destruction." But he is not the only journalist to suffer persecution by the authorities.
 
Recently the organisation Reporters Without Borders published its latest Press Freedom Index, and found countries in the Arab World had some of the worst records.

Inside Story, with presenter Shiulie Ghosh, looks at mounting state interference across the region, amid censorship and crackdowns with guests Mohamed Abdel Dayem, a Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mohammad al-Qadhi, a correspondent at the National Newspaper, and Issandr el-Amrani, a Moroccan-American writer on the Middle East, and a blogger. 

This episode of Inside Story aired from Tuesday, November 3, 2009.