Ahead of the parliamentary election held in Jordan on 20 November 2007, local and regional human rights groups gathered to monitor and assess the quality of the coverage by Jordanian media of the election campaign. The project was initiated by the Arab Working Group for media Monitoring set up in cooperation with IMS and Open Society International

In collaboration with IMS, a regional network of Arab human rights groups together with a coalition of three Jordanian human rights groups undertook to measure and monitor the media coverage of the election campaign in Jordan ahead of the parliamentary election held on 20 November 2007. The objective was to assess to which extent media in Jordan were fair and inclusive in their coverage of the many political parties and candidates running for seats in Parliament.
The media monitoring project is likely to provide new knowledge of the professional ability of the Jordanian press at the current rate to ensure that all voters are given sufficient and broad information about all candidates to make infirmed choices on election day. Also, any political bias will be unveiled in the final report of the project.

The Arab Working Group on Media Monitoring have identified the Jordanian host organisations and are sending regional experts from other Arab countries where media monitoring has already taken place, to assist the Jordanian hosts. A monitoring expert from the Slovak-based organisation Memo98 will train the
Jordanian people who are to monitor, measure and assess the media coverage. The methodology of the monitoring applied is similar to a model, which is usually used by the EU Commission, which follows internationally acknowledged standards of monitoring. This will ensure a high standard of the findings thus resulting in recognition by the national as well as international community.

The monitoring project in Jordan is funded by IMS and Open Society International.