Algerian authorities issued a “final warning” on Saturday before the French channel’s accreditation was withdrawn. “We don’t have a hidden agenda, the channel boss replies.”
The Algerian Minister of Communication on Saturday threatened the international television channel France 24 with “definitive withdrawal” of accreditation because, according to him, of his “flagrant bias” in covering the protests of the pro-democracy movement of Hirak. “A final warning before final withdrawal of accreditation was sent to France 24,” the ministry warned in a statement. “France 24’s bias in covering the Friday marches is flagrant, going so far as to resort without restraint to archival images to backdate them in order to help an anti-national residue made up of reactionary or separatist organizations,” with international ramifications, ”he accused in a violent diatribe.
The communication ministry thus alludes to the Islamist movement Rachad and the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK, pro-independence), both illegal in Algeria. “We try to do our job as honestly as possible. We just do our job as journalists in accordance with the rules in force, ”reacted Marc Saikali, director of France 24, to the AFP.
“We have no bias, let alone any agenda intended to harm anyone,” he said. Foreign media working in Algeria have for years been subjected to a bureaucratic, opaque and haphazard accreditation procedure. The director of Agence France-Presse (AFP) for Algeria, Philippe Agret, appointed in October 2019, has still not been accredited by the authorities.
In addition, working conditions remain difficult for Algerian journalists, exposed to both prosecution and even prison terms, like Khaled Drareni, and hostility from some Hirak activists.
The Minister of Communication and government spokesman, Ammar Belhimer, summoned the office of France 24 accredited to Algiers to warn him “against what is akin to subversive activity, illustrated by unprofessional practices hostile to our country ”, specifies the official APS agency in a dispatch.
According to the ministry, the French international channel “strives to regenerate at all costs these + prefabricated ‘counter-revolutionary upheavals’ fomented’ by NGOs established in Paris and in other European capitals”, a reference among others to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Amnesty International.
On Friday, a France 24 team was attacked by demonstrators during the protest movement’s weekly parade, according to AFP journalists there. This is not the first time that protesters have shown animosity towards the media, accused of bias in favor of the regime. Some also accuse journalists recruited by French media of being representatives of a country considered to support President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
Algeria is in 146th place (out of 180) in the 2020 world press freedom ranking established by RSF, falling 27 places compared to 2015.
