The presidents of the regional sections of the Moroccan Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FMEJ) align themselves with the position of the body, concerning the joint ministerial decree and the government decree on public aid to the press. At the end of a meeting held on Thursday, December 26, they supported the opinion of the executive office, adhering to “all supervised advocacy and protest initiatives” of the professional organization.
In a press release from the FMEJ, the presidents reiterated their “rejection of the content, objectives, motivations and criteria of the new public support system”, which they consider to be “a liquidation of hundreds of press companies in all the regions and putting their human resources on the street, as well as a fatal blow to the pluralism and diversity of the national media landscape and an act contrary to the law.
In this sense, the FMEJ expressed its “surprise at the comments of the ministry concerning the allocation of specific support to the regional press”, while the decree on support expressly provides that the regional press is “concerned by the support because it is an integral part of the national press.
The opportunity was for the presidents of the regional branches to deplore the failure of the implementation of the partnership agreements “signed between certain sections of the Federation and the regional councils, as actually happened in Tangier and Dakhla, and as it could have been achieved in Agadir” and elsewhere.
The FMEJ is therefore planning a mobilization program calling for the creation of a common front, which brings together the professional organizations concerned. The goal is to obtain the annulment of the ministerial order and the government decree, with the guarantees of a broader participatory reform.
Morocco
