Morocco
Independent magazine closesPosted Feb 13 2010
On Jan. 27, bailiffs seized the assets of the independent, outspoken magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire at its headquarters in Casablanca. The publication's editor, Aboubakr Jamai, told The Arabist blogger and Guardian contributor Issandr El Amrani he could already announce the official closure of the magazine.
TriMedia, the magazine's current publishing group, had gone bankrupt according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In a 2006 defamation suit brought against Le Journal by Claude Moniquet, a Moroccan court leveled the “largest libel fines ever imposed in the history of the Moroccan press,” Amrani said. This totaled $354,000 in damages, a difficult sum to pay in the face of advertising boycotts from both state and royally-owned firms and private advertisers who had been intimidated by the government to withdraw their support.
With Jamai's return in 2009 from a self-imposed exile, government attacks against the newsmagazine reemerged full-force. In September 2009, the court upheld its original ruling in the defamation case, which sentenced Le Journal to a sure financial collapse.
Many considered Le Journal Morocco's most important source of criticism and news. First published in 1997, the magazine discussed abuses by the country's interior minister, fought human rights violations and addressed the ongoing conflict with Western Sahara, Amrani said in a piece for the Guardian. With Le Journal's death, worries are mounting about the regression of press freedom in Morocco.