On a MAP News Story

By Jamal Elabiad 

A news story without reliable sources that support it aims at lying to the readers or the viewers through providing them with false news stories.  I really do not remember the book or the article where I read this brief definition of a false news story and the purpose it serves. It came to my mind soon after I read an article on the Web site of the Moroccan News Agency (or MAP) about the violent clashes that recently took place in Taza between demonstrators and the security forces.

According to the Moroccan News Agency, most of those who took to the streets in Taza on January 4^th were adolescents. But the Agency did not mention the sources its description of Taza protesters relied on. That simply means it described the protesters as minors with the intention to mislead Moroccans.

This is not the first time the Moroccan News Agency has turned to misleading and truth-hiding. Take, for example, the pro-democracy protests the Feb. 20 movement has been organizing for almost a year. The number of protesters around Morocco the Agency has reported always contradicts that of the movement activists.

In brief, the Agency always reduces on purpose the number of the Moroccans who take to the streets every Sunday to call for bread with the taste of dignity. Among the purposes the Agency serves through not giving the real number of pro-reform protesters in Morocco is whitening the image of the Moroccan government, its funder, at home and abroad.

It’s really a pity that the Moroccan News Agency still believes that Moroccans heavily depend on it for news updates and the latest developments in their country, and that’s why it usually misinforms them and provide them only with the news the Moroccan government wants them to know. He who pays the piper calls the tune!

YouTube is among the video-sharing Web sites the Agency could have visited before jumping to that conclusion. By the way, YouTube is one of the Web sites Moroccans trust for latest events in their country. Many videos on it show beyond doubt that the majority of those who protested last Wednesday in Taza were not minors.

They were unemployed graduates, inhabitants of El Koucha, a neglected neighbourhood in Taza, and university students. They took to the streets and were harshly suppressed by the security forces after they lost patience with the false promises they received from the officials in charge of the city affairs whenever they complained about joblessness, poverty, nepotism, and corruption.  

Moroccans’ expectations of the new government are countless. Reforming the public media is one example in point. And the Moroccan News Agency is a good start for several reasons. One is that the Agency is a “trusted” source of news for both Moroccan TV channels and radios!