Op-ed di Issandr el Amrani, lo arabist, sul Guardian. L’argomento è la chiusura del settimanale marocchino le Journal Hebdomadaire. Un bel giornale.
However, it was Le Journal Hebdomadaire, an irreverent and audacious magazine, that seemed to me – perhaps because I was editing a like-minded publication in Egypt at the time – to most embody the changes that had taken place. Le Journal gave me hope that the new Morocco was real, and that the new king would allow a gradual and peaceful transition to democracy.
Last Thursday, I learned from the man behind Le Journal, Abou Bakr Jamai, that bailiffs had come to the magazine’s office, just as its journalists were putting the final touches on a new issue, to seize its assets. A series of crippling libel fines and debts to the tax authorities had driven it to bankruptcy. “We can already officially announce the death of Le Journal,” Jamai told me. I was shaken to learn that no more issues of Le Journal would appear, although not surprised. It had become clear for several years that the palace – whether the king himself or his coterie of advisers – had given up on trying to co-opt or intimidate the magazine, as it has done with many other publications, and would sooner or later succeed in pushing it into oblivion by economic means.
La pubblicazione a cui si riferisce Issandr era il Cairo Times, un settimanale in inglese, ben fatto, buone inchieste, purtroppo durato troppo poco. Era la mia lettura preferita, quando vivevo al Cairo.