Covering Religion and Politics in Contemporary Moroccan Newspapers

Abstract

In transitional settings like Morocco, print journalism in supposed to be given every possible attention by scholars and political activists due to the crucial role it plays in the promotion of political values as well as in holding every constitutional institution accountable for the policies initiated and the budgets spent. Since the uprisings of 2011, a tumultuous year of uprisings, political unrest and political reforms in Morocco, it has become of paramount importance to examine the Moroccan print media coverage of politics and religion in order to understand how this industry is, or probably is not, contributing to the emergence of a healthy public debate regarding religion and politics in Morocco, a country characterized by cultural diversity, socio-cultural dynamics, and political stability compared to other countries in North Africa and the Middle East. This dissertation is primarily meant to problematize Moroccan newspaper coverage in an attempt to assess Morocco’s discourse regarding freedom of expression and political openness. The Critical Discourse Analysis approach has been adopted to analyze the data collected. The dissertation, trying to look at how the veil, polygamy, inheritance, education, art, and sexuality-related issues such as abortion, sex outside marriage, and homosexuality, seeks to provide an understanding of the ideology of each newspaper studied in order to explain why the aforementioned topics are battlefields of ideological clashes. Islam, the Monarchy, Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over Sahara, Islamism, secularism, corruption, social movements and the 2011 constitutional reform have also been studied to find out how they are covered by Moroccan leftist, Islamist and nationalist periodicals and weeklies. The dissertation also tends to explore the challenges facing the print press while particularly focusing on the existing political climate, the weaponization of advertisement, the rise of the digital sphere and the emergence of citizen journalism (the case of minority media and Mamfakich Movement). While it is true that print media is going online in various settings in Europe and North America where democracy has already been built, this dissertation argues that the going-online phenomenon and the decay of print journalism is going to negatively impact Morocco where democracy has not yet taken root. Still, how newspapers cover religion and politics should tell a great deal about the political, economic and socio-cultural environments within which they function and operate in post-2011 Morocco. This dissertation is an attempt to problematize Moroccan newspapers and their coverage of religion and politics of a country said to be in transition. Providing an analysis of newspaper coverage of politics and religion should eventually be an answer to anyone seeking to know what being a journalist means in Morocco.