Fez - During a session of oral questions of the House of Representatives yesterday, Minister of Communication and Government spokesman, Mustapha El Khalfi, discussed the quality of public media in relation to Moroccan culture.
The Minister stressed that some programs broadcast on public TV are in violation of the stipulations of the Royal Dahir of 2002 concerning public media. According to the Royal Dahir, all programs broadcast on public media should take into consideration Moroccan social and cultural peculiarities.
Criticism for public TV stems from the high number of Mexican soap-operas that 2M and Al Oula broadcast on a daily basis. Many citizens question the quality and content of these programs, which can be contradictory to their families' conservative principles.
"We need Moroccan Media; Morocco is not Afghanistan or any other country. The problem is not whether Morocco is like Afghanistan, Sudan or Iran, the problem is that there are those who want to turn Morocco [through serials and movies] into a brothel for Mexico," said the Minister
On the other hand, critics suggest that the Ministry of Communication aims at controlling state media by interfering in programing on ideological grounds. These critics state that the Ministry had prepared 140 negative remarks regarding programs in the public media based on religious principles, and that this work was conducted under the supervision of the Deputy Secretary-General of the Justice and Development Party. However, El Khalfi denied these accusations, stressing that "this information is wrong and baseless."
These remarks, which were sent to the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAKA), mainly tackle the topic of crimes in relation to audiovisual programs. According to Maghreb Arab Press (MAP), the remarks "caution against the dangers that stems from the provision of programs that glorify crimes, and present perpetrators as heroes."
In the same regard, the government spokesman stressed that, the government, in order to maintain the independence of public media and in line with constitutional requirements, addressed the imbalances of state media through HAKA in its capacity as a constitutional institution competent to deal with all observations in this domain.
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