Q: What is the state of press freedom in your country?

NBC: Maybe the difference in Palestine in comparison to other Arab countries is you have the private ownership. We have seen many radio stations, magazines, newspaper, television stations are independently owned. From this we depart from the traditional government controlled that we have seen in the rest of the Arab world. I would say that privatization is a big issue there and greatly encourage, but at the sometime what we have to do is to encourage the standards of people who work in the provide section to make sure they adhere to the basic principles of journalism. But generally speaking we are moving away form the government that has been controlling everything, including the media.

Q: What are the biggest challenges for women journalists in your country?

NBC: The biggest challenge, I would say, is that women are not taken seriously. It is a profession in the past, at least in the Arab world, that has been seen as a man's position. Very often if the story requires you to work at night it is not allowed because of tradition imposed by the society. We wanted to make sure that people understand that what we are doing is a service to society. A free society means a free state, and a free state comes with men and women being able to contribute through journalism. Also, women are not promoted to higher positions in the company, and this is, I think, a big challenge we face. Third, we need more women to specialize in areas like whether it is a medical reporter, or court report or scientific reporter. We don’t have the specialization. We have people who know everything about everything but we need to have women who know about each subject in-depth to be able to report on it in a credible way.

Q: How do you and other women journalists face those challenges?

NBC: I will say never shy away from your rights. If you believe you deserve that job, then you will make sure that everybody knows about it and you don’t take no for an answer. You will be persistent and you do your job to the up most professional point that people cannot take anything against you. And sometimes because you are a woman, people say, well maybe she got the job precisely because of her sex. But we want to make sure that people actually know about the quality of work that you do and not just your immediate bosses, but if you have headquarters that people know about you and support each others as well. It is very often sometimes you see this division between women even within one group. The important thing is to speak in one voice and to stay to your ground and to believe in what you do, and ultimately I think we will take the lead.