The media in Morocco: a highly political economy, the case of the paper and on-line press since the early 1990s

Abstract

In spite of (and perhaps because of) the importance of what is at stake, scientific research on news media in Morocco, and in particular the changes they have been going through since the 1990s, remains very limited. In fact, although the history of the Moroccan press has been the subject of several studies (for example Miège, 1954; Aouchar, 1990; Baida, 1996) as has television (Zaid, 2009; Campaiola, 2014), contemporary debates have been poorly studied apart from: the participants themselves through personal testimonies (Daoud, 2007; Alaoui, 2012; Bensmaïn, 2015); reports of international organisations, or debates which are sometimes stimulating but not based on investigations (El Ayadi, 2009) 1. This explains a certain normativity of this literature, often limited to measuring the level of "democratisation" of the Moroccan media. Furthermore, other dominant theoretical approaches do not help us to describe the complexity of press businesses, their operational methods, and the issues at stake vis-à-vis the powers in place. For example, works on transitology tend to be evolutionist, believing in possible "progress" and in changes which accompany any unavoidable "democratic transition". The notion of hybridity is equally promoted by certain analysts (Belghazi, 2005; Chadwick, 2013) as an alternative, as it could enable us to study the way various national political systems work in countries such as Morocco. Far from relying on these far too often excessively normative, general, or ethnocentric interpretation frameworks, this research 2 intends to analyse the Moroccan journalistic field since the 1990s using a relational sociology looking at its news businesses and showing their strong dependence on the economic and political fields. This relational perspective makes reference, on the one hand, to the works on the theory of fields, initiated by Pierre Bourdieu (for the media, see Benson and Neveu 2004 in particular) and, on the other hand, those focusing on the political economy of the media (for example Wasko, Murdock and Sousa, 2011 ; Palmer and Tumber 1991). To summarise briefly, the first are useful when considering a structural frame in order to, first, sketch out the relative positions of agents and institutions 1 Among the rare exceptions, we can mention several works :

Conclusion

“…Ostensibly, media in Morocco have been strongly controlled by political and economic clientelism. These political leaders need these publications for reputation management and to play down corruption scandals and ensure electoral campaign success (Benchenna, Ksikes, & Marchetti, 2017). This clientelism is also a manifestation of the rentier state in Morocco.…”

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Media, Accountability, and Dissent in the Middle East and North Africa

“…A representative of the ministry of information admits they ask advertisers to fund what he sees as good media, “a circle of virtue—good money for good media” (El Issawi 2017: 14). A combination of legal pursuit and economic boycott led to the closure of most Moroccan critical media, unable to survive such pressures (see El Issawi 2016a, 2016b; Benchenna et al 2017).…”

Alternative Public Spaces in Hybrid Media Environments: Dissent in High Uncertainty

“…While the experiences of this critical press are traditionally examined through a historical lens, with a focus on their interplay with the political and economic structures of repression (see Benchenna et al, 2017; El Ayadi & Naji, 2006; El Kadoussi, 2018; Zaid, 2017), this article focuses on their practices as journalists, in an attempt to understand how they contribute to—or hinder—the formation of counter publics under tough repression. In other words, instead of considering this press a victim of the regime’s repression, this article investigates the press’ influence as an active player in—potentially—propagating counter narratives, and how the silencing tactics used by the regime are contributing to limiting their emancipatory effect.…”