Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

This is the fifth floor.

The fifth floor, you knowssonous.

This is the fifth floor at Farnak Amidi Sobath. This is the fifth floor at the heart of global storytelling with BBC journalists from all around the world.

I'm your host, Faranak Amidi.

During the last year of Bashar al-Assad's rule of Syria, reporters without borders

ranked the country second to last in the World Press Freedom Index.

The country was incredibly dangerous for journalists who had to manage a strict government censorship.

But in December 2024, Assad's rule was toppled by a swift rebel offensive

that took the capital city Damascus within a few days.

After that, the country experienced a level of press freedom it hadn't seen for decades.

But now a new government is in place.

Will this freedom continue? Joining me to discuss further is Dalia Haydar of BBC Arabic. Welcome to the fifth floor, Dalia. It's great to have you. Thank you. So Dalia, you yourself, you're Syrian. You worked as a journalist during Bashar Assad's reign in Syria.

Tell me, how is it?

It was challenging but exciting at the same time.

I was writing in Arabic News Daily in Syria, which was a local daily, and I was also

the editor-in-chief of an English-speaking magazine.

And it was very interesting because I was talking to two different audiences with two different

set of red lines and margins of freedom that I had to test in my job in both publications.

What kind of the problems that you have to deal with? What kind of challenges the job?

So the challenges, they're more linked to what you can and cannot do as a journalist. And also, it's linked to the, I don't want to say the crisis of trust, but the issue of trust between the audience and the journalists. Because of course, people have different experiences based on what the journalist, which publication they're working for, whether it's like speaking for the government or private. So there was a problem at both ends, you know, dealing with the government, dealing with the censorship, with the red lines, with the changing mood of how they monitor things and how they approve or disapprove things.

And at the same time, also with people, you always have to build the trust with them

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