Morocco: Monarchy Ups Pressure on Independent Media
October 1st, 2010 by Evan
Writing in The Atlantic, Max Fisher describes recent government pressure on independent media outlets in Morocco. Nichane, a popular Arabic-language news magazine with a history of addressing taboo social and political topics, has been forced to close, Fisher reports. The magazine and its publisher Ahmed Benchemsi have been harassed repeatedly by the government in recent years and ultimately succumbed to an advertising boycott led by the Omnium Nord Africain Group—a powerful holding company with close ties to the Moroccan royal family. Benchemsi promised to continue publishing his French-language magazine TelQuel in spite of the advertising boycott.
Posted in Freedom, Journalism, Morocco |
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October 20th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
[…] Morocco dropped 8 places in the global ranking, which the report’s authors attribute to “the arbitrary closing down of a newspaper, the financial ruin of another newspaper, orchestrated by the authorities, […]