Dr Fatima El-Issawi
LSE Middle East Centre Report
Abstract
This report on Moroccan media and democratisation is part of the ‘Arab National Media and Politics: Democracy Revisited’ project, examining the relationship between Arab traditional mass media and the political sphere within the remit of political change in the Arab world, enabled by the popular Arab uprisings that erupted from 2010 on.
The report looks especially at journalists’ approach to entrenched taboos and the dynamics of censorship and self-censorship in newsrooms. It is based on the outcome of a series of qualitative interviews conducted in Morocco in July 2015 with more than 30 journalists and stakeholders in mainstream media, both print and audio-visual. The report aims to extend and complement policy work on the impact of the political change on the traditional national media, and on the role played by the national media in consolidating or weakening the democratisation processes.
About the Author
Fatima El-Issawi is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, currently leading on a collaboration project with the American University of Dubai entitled ‘Arab National Media and Politics: Democracy Revisited’, looking at changes in media practices in traditional media industries in Morocco and Algeria. She is also Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Essex. Fatima has over 15 years of experience in covering the Middle East for international media. She is also a media trainer and consultant for several media development and international agencies.