Zawaya

Freedom House Report highlights disparity of openness within the Maghreb

By: Mohamed Yehdih Ould Baba Ahmed

Professional journalism is one of the best means of public opinion, which has the ability to monitor, discuss, debate and search for solutions to the issues of concern to the public, both under despotic and non-despotic political regimes. This requires having a framework, even if it’s merely theoretical, in order to protect professional journalism from the brutality and lethality of those regimes that apply the policy of the carrot and stick to besiege it and reduce its freedom. It is noteworthy this year, according to the report of the American Freedom House, that the situation has become worrying with the remarkable decline in press freedom at the global level in general, and in the Arab and Maghreb region in particular, where Mauritania is the only star that has a relatively free press. This situation requires looking for a cure for this phenomenon in these countries. The question that arises here is: How can Maghreb countries promote a free and responsible press?

To answer this question, I personally believe that the dialectical interrelationship of freedom and responsibility requires more research and debate than we can afford here. However, the source of freedom is democratic systems, while responsibility may be the voluntary limitation that hits this freedom from those who practice it. Therefore, our analysis here will first focus on the diagnosis of the situation, then search for a cure briefly afterward, by exposing the reality of press in the Arab Maghreb countries in general, and the characteristics of each country apart. The start would be with the Kingdom of Morocco, which has a long-standing experience in private press, dating back to the seventies of the last century. However, Moroccan private press has been recently declining and its journalists have been subject to harassment, as it happened with al-Jazeera channel; add to that the trials of some Moroccan newspapers’ publishers. The State has its justifications, and journalists have their arguments.

In Algeria, despite the restrictions imposed on the freedom of the media, it’s worth mentioning that the Algerian press and newspapers are among the richest in terms of news sources, and media coverage; in addition to a tremendous momentum in terms of sales and expansion capacity. As for Tunisia, even though it’s different from the previous two countries because of its despotic and authoritarian ruling regime, its journalists are among the most skilled in the Maghreb region in terms of education quality. Regarding Libya, it has a totally different system that is based on comprehensiveness. The star of press freedom, even if it’s relative, is glowing in Mauritania alone. So what is the solution?

From my personal perspective, I think that as long as we are determined to build a united Maghreb, then instead of looking for expensive solutions, we can get a free and responsible press in our region through integration with each other, based on all the features existing in our countries, after merging them into a unified experience. This can be achieved by combining the long-standing Moroccan experience and the richness and large diffusion of Algerian newspapers, under the supervision of Tunisian managers, in an environment that enjoys more freedom like in Mauritania, and the rest will be on Libya. Finally, we can say that the Freedom House report about press freedom in the Maghreb countries clearly reflects the extent of disparity in terms of real openness within these countries.