Bahraini uprising of 2011 in dictating editorial policy over Libya, and now Syria". Critics did note that Al Jazeera coverage of the crisis in Bahrain did increase in May and June 2011 and conceded that the severe press restrictions in Bahrain made coverage extremely difficult. The Qatar-based Al Jazeera has been heralded as one of the few networks who gave comprehensive and unbiased coverage of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. The network is widely credited with helping protests maintain the momentum which resulted in the overthrow of the entrenched regimes of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. Al Jazeera was
Hassib Ben Ammar "Democracy", as a published medium for the opposition Movement of Socialist Democrats, becoming the publication's director. The opposition party was at this time illegal and he found himself confronted by the authorities with more than twenty legal cases. In December 1987, a few weeks after President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali came to power, Ben Ammar closed down Erraï. Sources close to the newspaper claimed that the new President was enraged by the publication of an article by Oum Zied entitled "The drift towards authoritarianism of the Ben Ali régime," banned the edition containing the article and launched a campaign