The great difficulty in accessing information, cases before the courts, and financial restrictions. These are, among other things, the obstacles to freedom of the press in Morocco.
Is Morocco a bad student when it comes to freedom of the press? In any case, this is what Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reveals in its new ranking for the year 2022. The NGO ranked Morocco in 135th place, one rank ahead of the year previous. What Morocco is criticized for is “continuous pressure” on independent journalists.
“The main source of information for the population comes from social networks and online sites,” says Reporters Without Borders. And to add that “society consumes the independent press without being ready to defend it”. “Disinformation” is also singled out by RSF, which criticizes this practice by qualifying it as a “reign (which has been) accentuated by the promotion of buzz and sensationalism journalism which does not respect privacy and degrades, in general, the image of women. In addition, RSF indicates that in 2020, 110 Moroccan journalists seized the National Press Council (CNP), a regulatory authority endowed with the power to sanction organizations violating the press code, to take “disciplinary sanctions” against these “defamatory media”.
Social unrest
What is most striking in the RSF report is that Algeria is better off than Morocco. The neighbor to the east camped at 134th. Amazing when you know that the Algerian military junta muzzles the free and independent press and uses all forms of repression! Some countries that are better ranked than Morocco have experienced assassinations of journalists, or live in situations of war and social and political unrest, while others do not even experience minimal political stability, experiencing coups. military and emergency declarations, and the closure of television and radio stations by administrative decisions. RSF also referred to the story of the closure by the authorities of the daily Akhbar Al Yaoum, when everyone knows that this decision, which did not take into consideration the rights of journalists and other employees, came from the owners of the newspaper. This casts some doubt on the objectivity of Reporters Without Borders.
One thing is certain: freedom of the press in Morocco undeniably suffers from two problems: difficult access to information, particularly from administrations and ministries; and the financial restrictions imposed on certain independent media outlets that nothing can stop in the face of their quest for the truth. For the National Syndicate of the Moroccan Press, Morocco has a plural press which demonstrates freedom of tone rare in the Arab world.
However, it is corseted by censorship and above all self-censorship coming from certain press owners for economic reasons. Also, some journalists are still prosecuted in the context of press cases under articles of law other than those of the law on publishing and the press. These cases are a kind of bad publicity for the country internationally.
