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Marrakech – In the Middle East and North Africa, where Morocco historically has been somewhat on the periphery of the Arab media scene, failing to project one’s voice means being perpetually a subject of other countries’ narratives. We have seen how media can ignite and steer events: the satellite TV revolution of the 1990s and 2000s made channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya household names, and these networks demonstrated unprecedented power to shape public discourse. If you’re in your 20s like me, you probably grew up watching your father keep Al Jazeera on almost all day.
These networks proved capable of moving the Arab street, influencing public sentiment on everything from the Iraq War to the Arab Spring uprisings. At times they mobilized support for causes or, conversely, contributed to public pressure that toppled regimes. They made and unmade the reputations of leaders, promoted certain interests and undermined others, all through the screen. Such is the potency of a well-crafted media narrative. Morocco witnessed this firsthand: distant conflicts or issues suddenly became immediate in Moroccan cafes and living rooms via these foreign channels.
Morocco’s inward-looking media cannot win an outward-facing world
They say the media is the fourth power, but in Morocco’s case, that simply isn’t true. Moroccan state media never played in that league; it neither challenged the big networks on their turf nor created an alternative narrative space for North African affairs. The result is that stories relevant to Morocco (say, the Western Sahara dispute, or development successes in Morocco) are often framed by non-Moroccan outlets, sometimes inaccurately or with bias, while Moroccan TV remains largely invisible outside its borders.
The notion of using media as a diplomatic and strategic tool is not new. In fact, the world powers figured it out long ago. King Hassan II understood the power of the microphone better than anyone. As Moroccan journalist and royal chronicler Mohammed Saddik Maaninou recounts, during an Arab summit held in Fez in the 1980s – likely centered around King Fahd’s proposal for Palestine – Hassan II anticipated that Arab leaders would likely walk out complaining the summit had failed to produce results.
So, while the meeting was still underway, he stepped out, gave a carefully crafted press statement on the event, and had it broadcast immediately. By the time other leaders emerged from the room, the media had already framed the meeting through the lens of Hassan II’s message. His statement became the version of record. It was a bold exercise in narrative preemption that left no room for rival interpretations.
Domestically, the monarch’s decision to appoint Driss Basri as both Interior and Information Minister similarly sent a clear message: control the message, control the momentum. The media was never an accessory for King Hassan II; it was a tool of governance. But that control was inward-looking, designed to manage the domestic narrative, not to project power outward. Morocco, maybe, understood media discipline at home, yet never built a strategy for influence abroad – and that is the gap it can no longer afford to ignore.
During the Second World War and the Cold War, radio was a weapon of influence. Britain’s BBC World Service started an Arabic radio broadcast in 1938, which became legendary across the Middle East. Generations of Arabs, including Moroccans, remember the iconic phrase “Huna Landan” (“This is London”) chiming through crackling radios. For decades, when local state media in Arab countries lacked credibility, millions tuned into BBC Arabic for reliable news. That single foreign voice, transmitted over shortwave, built enormous trust and influence – so much so that it became part of the collective memory of the region.
The British understood that speaking to people in their own language, respecting their culture while presenting Britain’s perspective, would win them goodwill (and serve their interests during tumultuous times). The United States did similarly with the Voice of America and Radio Sawa, and during the Cold War it beamed Radio Free Europe behind the Iron Curtain. The lesson from history is clear: if you inform and engage people directly, especially when you fill an information void, you win a loyal audience and often their sympathy.
In more recent times, European nations have kept this practice alive and well. France and Germany, for example, have made sure their worldview is accessible globally by broadcasting in multiple languages. It’s not by accident that today one can watch France 24 or Deutsche Welle in Arabic on satellite TV. These countries invested heavily to run multilingual news channels. They recognized that if you want to maintain cultural ties and influence international debate – especially in regions where you have interests – you must be present in the media landscape of those regions.
Launched in the 2000s, France 24’s Arabic channel was Paris’s answer to the likes of CNN and Al Jazeera. It sought to give France a direct line to Arabic-speaking audiences with French perspectives on world events. Germany’s Deutsche Welle TV also expanded its Arabic programming, not to mention its longstanding radio broadcasts. Even beyond news, they produce documentaries, talk shows, and digital content tailored to these audiences. The strategic payoff is subtle but invaluable: when a crisis or misunderstanding arises, these countries have a platform to clarify their stance and a reservoir of credibility to draw on, because they’ve been engaging viewers for years.
No one will tell your story as you want it told
It’s not just Western powers. Ambitious nations around the world have embraced the media game to boost their influence. China, for instance, has developed an entire suite of international media offerings in various languages – from CGTN (China Global Television Network) in English, French, Arabic and more, to Radio China International broadcasting in Swahili and other local languages across Africa. This is part of Beijing’s global soft power drive, ensuring that its mega-initiatives like the Belt and Road are accompanied by a narrative that China itself shapes.
Similarly, as Ankara asserts itself as a regional leader appealing to Muslim and developing-world audiences, Turkey has launched TRT World in English and TRT Arabi in Arabic. Iran, despite limited resources, understood the value of an outward media voice: it runs Press TV in English and Al-Alam in Arabic, and even a Spanish channel (HispanTV), all aimed at presenting Tehran’s version of world events and countering Western narratives.
Russia, through RT – broadcasting in English, Arabic, French, and Spanish – built one of the most aggressive state-funded media operations in modern history, weaponizing information as a tool of geopolitical influence long before the term “hybrid warfare” entered mainstream vocabulary.
But no network illustrates the sophistication of strategic media fragmentation more vividly than Al Jazeera. Its Arabic and English channels resemble sisters raised in different houses – sharing a surname but serving entirely distinct masters. Al Jazeera Arabic operates as a mobilizational platform, amplifying Islamist currents, fueling populist grievances, and functioning as a megaphone for Qatari foreign policy priorities across the Arab world.
Al Jazeera English, by contrast, presents itself as a progressive, cosmopolitan alternative to Western media. Measured in tone, diverse in sourcing, palatable to liberal Western audiences, it is a channel that could comfortably sit in a London newsroom or a university common room. The two channels do not contradict each other by accident; they do so by design, each calibrated to tell its respective audience exactly what it wants to hear.
More recently, Qatar has refined this architecture further through a strategy of editorial localization – launching country-specific digital platforms such as AJ Morocco, AJ Algeria, AJ Palestine, and equivalents across the region, each tailored to local sensitivities, vernacular dialects, and national grievances.
It is precision-targeted narrative engineering, where each national edition caters to what audiences in that specific country want to consume. This ultimately reinforces Qatar’s influence not through a single broadcast voice but through an archipelago of localized platforms that feel indigenous while serving a single foreign policy.
These countries realized that if they don’t tell their story, no one else will tell it the way they want – or worse, their rivals will tell a distorted version. For Morocco, which prides itself on sovereignty, modernity, and an independent path, there is a lesson here: remaining silent or parochial in the global media arena is a strategic mistake. If nations with far fewer advantages in stability and diversity than Morocco can run multi-language broadcasters, Morocco can and should do it too.
Again, look at the Arab world’s own media success stories for inspiration. Al Jazeera started in the 1990s as a Qatari upstart and became a global brand synonymous with bold journalism, forcing even superpowers to respond to what it aired. We should, for instance, recall that Morocco closed the pan-Arab network’s bureau in Rabat in 2010, withdrawing accreditation from its journalists and suspending its operations on the grounds of “distorting Morocco’s image.” Al Arabiya, backed by Saudi Arabia, offered a different editorial line, and it too built a massive following.
Their success shows that content which resonates – whether by tapping into shared grievances, providing uncensored coverage, or simply high-quality reporting – can rapidly gain influence. Morocco could well become the source of the next influential network, one perhaps focused on North and West African issues from an African perspective, which is currently an underserved niche.
Imagine a Moroccan-backed channel that broadcasts in French across francophone Africa, counter-balancing the narrative dominance of French media. Or a pan-Arab channel from Morocco that gives more weight to Maghreb issues which Al Jazeera, being Gulf-centric, might gloss over.
With the credibility that Morocco has earned in certain domains (for example, counter-terrorism or religious moderation), a channel associated with these strengths could quickly gain respect. But because the audience can tell propaganda from honesty, this requires vision, investment, and the political will to sometimes let media professionals speak frankly and freely.
This is the second chapter of a three-part op-ed series on Moroccan media. To read Chapter I, click here; to explore Chapter III, click here.
