1 – Rising For Freedom Magazine (RFM) is a Syrian semi monthly, independent, political, cultural, social, and economic magazine.
– It is issued by Syrian young men in and out of Syria, and deals with the general Syrian affairs.
– It is independent, doesn’t belong to any party, organization, or political current.
– It deals with the general Syrian political affairs, with a space for political analysis and criticism.
– Cultural: It deals with cultural affairs of different trends, and participates in spreading social, intellectual and political awareness.
– Social: It covers the affairs of the Syrian society, and it defends its just questions through publishing investigations and reports about issues of different subjects that concern the Syrian citizen including those of economy, education, technology. Medicine, and various sciences.
– Bimonthly: It is issued in the seventh and seventeenth days of every month.
Fredomrise: was born from the womb of the Syrian Local Coordination Committees at the beginning of 2012 and continued until the editors, at the start of 2014 felt that it was necessary to be independent due to the complications of the Syrian case and felt the need to a Syrian independent opinion free from any referential subordination to the various political currents on the Syrian land.
2- Aims of Freedomraise:
- To be a free forum for the thoughts of Syrian youth, in which they can publish their ideas and opinions toward about various issues.
- Freedomraise doesn’t bear any specific political stand, and it accepts the personal opinion and the opinions of the others.
- To cover the events in Syria through subjective and balanced processing and analysis
- Stressing on the real role of journalism as a fourth monitoring power in the state and society.
- Criticizing the political elites, and the various revolutionary parties and organizations operating in Syria like local councils and adopting the constructive criticism which aims at reform and correction.
- Confirming the values of freedom, dignity, justice and citizenship.
- Fighting all aspects of extremism and fanaticism.
- Reporting the sufferings of the Syrians in Syria and highlighting the issues absent from the general media scene.
- Invoking the public to demand their rights in developing their societies and participating in the operation of real political activities.
- Creating a civilized and constructive cultural atmosphere based on free dialogue at the level of Syrian Society.
- Reconstructing the public ideals of the Syrian Society which the political regime had deformed.
- Enhancing the principles of freedom, democracy , justice and equality. As well as the principles of citizenship and coexistence in Syria.
- Reactivating the civil society in Syria.
- Documenting the violations of human rights in Syria and highlighting the lawful and political awareness in the society.
- Creating opportunities to new writers and validating the principles of research and creativity of the youth.
- Depending on the Syrian talents in and out of Syria in writing, publishing, printing, distributing, designing and drawing in the field of printed and electronic media, and giving opportunities to new writers and artists to consolidate the values of research, writing and arts of the Syrian Youth.
- Contacting with the journalists and writers and the new media establishments.
- Enhancing the pluralism of Syrian society by specifying section of the magazine to the Kurdish issue and to be written by Kurdish and Arab editors as well as distributing the magazine in the Kurdish areas.
- Issuing the magazine electronically in English to be a reference and a source of information about the Syrian Issue as well as translating important files in foreign media into Arabic.
3- Standards of Freedomraise Publication:
- Subjectivity, credibility, accuracy and evenness.
- Complete distinction between the magazines views and those of the writer , and the news and the opinion.
- Freedomraise rejects any subject which has elements of incitement on violence, and hatred against any part of the Syrian society.
- Freedomraise refuses to publish any subject which includes harmful humiliations or undocumented accusations or altercation that do not serve serious research and writing, or any sarcastic or impolite comments related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, belief, physical, mental, education, gender, social status, political and religious orientation. It fights discrimination of any kind; religious, intellectual, woman and any aspect of discrimination.
- Freedom rise doesn’t publish any subject that may hurt public ethics or encourage vice.
- Freedomraise doesn’t publish advertisements that serve political, religious military parties and organizations.
- The published materials express the opinions of the writers not that of Freedomraise.
- Freedomraise doesn’t necessarily support any of the ideas, orientations and opinions published excluding those expressed by its editors.
- Commitment to the spaces of publication.
- Priorities are always given to subjects written specially for Freedomraise.
- Freedomraise doesn’t publish photos of killed persons, and corpses that may cause disrespect to death and those violating moral values.
- Freedomraise doesn’t publish photos of women, children and men in humiliating positions that may harm their human dignity.
4- Rights of Intellectual Ownership and Republication:
- Freedomraise is published in compliance with the standards of “Creative Commons” (CC BY-NC-ND) i.e. it respects the right of the original source of information and rejects reusing any material to achieve gains and it also rejects shearing or amending original texts when republished.
- Parts of the photos published in Freedomraise were especially shot to be published in the magazine , therefore they are exclusive In some occasions we may publish photos of unknown origin and are circulated by activists on the web in especially when it is difficult to take permissions to republish them due to the complications of the present Syrian status. In this case freedom rise resorts to the laws of creative commons and/or fair usage and pledges not to modify original photos related to the events in Syria.
- Freedom rise commits itself not to remove any signs or logos of the owners of photos unless the artistic need arises to do that, for example cutting part of the photo to fit the spaces available on the pages of the magazine.
- Freedomraise pledges to refer to the source of the photo under or in it, if required by the owners.
- Freedomraise commits to refer to the photos published with the human and social articles taken from the web as “symbolic photos” in order not to be related to the persons mentioned in these articles.
5- Rights of the Board of Editors:
- The board of editors has the right to correct any materials to be published linguistically and grammatically.
- The board of editors has the right to omit or change any words that may seem to harmful or inciting against any sect.
- The editor has the right to put any words or phrases violating the policy of the magazine or might not accept them between two quotation marks to negate the responsibility of the magazine of publishing them.
- The board of editors has the right to reorganize the press materials in the most suitable way after taking the permission of the writer to do that.
- The board of editors has the right to add the suitable quotation marks to highlight testimonies or sayings mentioned in any article without distorting the essence of the testimony and their general meaning.
- The board of editors has the right to ask for the origins of ant testimonies or sayings mentioned in any article without explaining the reasons.
6- Spaces and volumes of publications:
- Freedomraise is printed in a standard size; A4.
- Number of pages mostly is 16 pages , some times more than that.
- The space of the complete page is 800 words in addition to titles and photos.
- Freedomraise specializes a complete page, 800 words for interviews, reports or important files, and sometimes two pages exceptionally.
- We prefer articles of no more than 500 words.
7- Writers and Journalists:
- Freedomraise depends on journalists and writers as well as Syrian and Palestinian Syrian activists.
- Sometimes it adopts special articles written by none Syrian writers.
- Priority of publishing in Freedomraise is given to Syrian and Syrian Palestinian young males and females.
- The board of editors of Freedomraise tries to balance between importance and seriousness of the article with the number of participation and readings after publication.
- The board of editors of Freedomraise expects from the writers and journalists to activate positively with the materials published on the pages of social media and all the available spaces of the web, in terms of participating in publishing, promoting, comments, dialogue, and constructive criticism in order to reach the widest sector of the Syrian public , readers and followers all round the world and to influence the public awareness.
8- Participation:
– Freedomraise receives participation from all the Syrians in and out of Syria on its Email:
- Freedomraise prefers that participants for the first time to present themselves and their journalist and political experiences in short. The magazine evaluates the security situation which prevents some participants to reveal their real names.
- The size of any article sent shouldn’t exceed 400 words.
- It is preferable to join the article with a photo expressing the content of the article and to refer to the origin of the photo.
- Any article sent should be exclusive, not published before in any paper, magazine, electronic site, or a blog.
- The writer has the right to republish his article after being published in Freedomraise provided that he refers to its publication in Freedomraise first.
9- Financial bonuses
- Freedomraise determines symbolic financial bonuses to the authorized writers and journalists according to an agreement signed between the writer and Freedomraise.
- The board of editors determines the financial bonus of the article according to its value and necessity as defined by the board of editors.
