I am a plant with roots in the nursery of original literature and jurisprudence of Sharia, and a stem in the garden of law and international relations, and branches that grew up for seven years in the press garden of the Maghreb Arab Press Agency in Yamama Street in Rabat, and in the civil service space for twelve years in the Ministry of Communication in the same city. However, this plant was exploited, on the one hand, to open the flowers of its fruits, which were killed by the winds of voluntary departure in 2005, to explore the depths of entrepreneurship in the fields of information technology and the digital content industry, and on the other hand to contribute, on behalf of the Information Technology Federation, in drafting the white paper for electronic journalism in 2013, to In addition to representing Morocco in the preparations for the World Summit on the Information Society, and in meetings of experts from different walks of life, which was credited for my participation in the formulation of the Digital Morocco Strategy 2009-2013.
In relation to your professional path, how do you view the status of media entrepreneurship in Morocco?
In fact, I owe my career orientation towards the field of digital transformation first to the Maghreb Arab Press Agency, in which I trained for seven years, on the subtleties and algorithms of processing national and international news clippings, and dealing professionally with priorities, sacred things, and prohibitions. The agency also gave me the opportunity of a lifetime to complete training in the Master of Media Sciences, which changed the course of my academic life, at the most appropriate time, from law, politics and international relations to the world of specialization in digitization, press archives and data processing.Data Scientist On the other hand, I am indebted to the Ministry of Communication, which taught me for 12 years the protocols of public relations and dealing with journalists, with national and international press agencies, public, partisan and trade union institutions, and international organizations, but the opportunity to voluntarily leave in 2005 was a golden opportunity to open up to the private sector and entrepreneurship in At a time when the World Summit on the Information Society (2003 Geneva Plan of Action and 2005 Tunis Agenda) recommended that the era of unilateral preparation of public, economic and social policies by public institutions had ended, but rather the principle of partnership with the private sector, civil society and international organizations had begun.All these learnings and experiences made me look To the reality of journalistic contracting, there is a double look, a professional view and a technological view, and each has an essay. Today, the press contracting is living in a time when the digital transformation has turned the reality of the press contracting upside down, as journalistic practices have changed and new professions and new actors have emerged, economic models that journalistic contractings have not known before, and methods of governance. Unprecedented, and despite the issuance of the new law to legalize the field of journalism and publishing, it tried to combat the large number of websites, whose number exceeded 2,000 in 2012.
These attempts to legally fit journalistic companies came after the initiative to prepare the “White Book for Electronic Journalism” that was prepared in 2012 under the supervision of the Ministry of Communication, but with the involvement of experts representing “all concerned parties” in accordance with the recommendations of the aforementioned World Summit (from the private sector, the Press Syndicate, the Ministries of Information and the Ministry of Employment). Public and the Copyright Office – where I had the honor to participate in its preparation on behalf of the Information Technology FederationAPEBI.org.ma) ).
I say that the recommendations of this “white paper for electronic journalism” were ahead of their time and have not been implemented until now, and they are still valid to this day. To save these journalistic companies from the suffocating crisis they are living through, in light of the biggest conspiracy of silence that I have experienced in my professional life. This is despite the official acknowledgment of the crisis it is experiencing, which was declared by former ministers, union and association officials, and senior officials of major national contracting and press institutions. The last one was announced by official statements (accompanied by links to video recordings) on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, June 2, 2022.
Blockchain technology is one of the important technologies in the field of governance of the Internet environment today. In your opinion, is it possible to apply the philosophy of this technology in light of the constraints that the media and journalist scene is full of in our country?
This technology is not based on a philosophical basis, but rather derives its roots from the practices of our ancestors, because it is based on the “intelligence of individuals and groups” and on the basis of the abolition of “intermediate structure rings” on which all hierarchical relations of transactions are based between the various groups of society that are subject to a gradation of power to carry out various operations Which goes in one direction, which opens the way for the exploitation of hierarchical authority and withholding, stopping or changing some operations, and can only be viewed by the one who is directly higher.
While the governance of operations based on the blockchain, that is, “sequential and distributed blocks in all directions with complete transparency and solidarity responsibility based on collective ratifications in an interactive and instantaneous manner”, is derived from the governance of cooperatives that our ancestors invented and neglected, but now it has become the basis of the social and solidarity economy adopted by Chinese enterprises. Which protects it to this day from inflation and the suffocating economic crisis and bankrupt competition. This is what has come to be called Blockchain, a technology that has brought about a qualitative revolution in the field of digital currency, whose operations are managed without the mediation of banks and take place directly between individuals and institutions, and fights from every side because of the danger posed by its spread to the future of banks that claim that the digital currency facilitates money laundering . As if the sons are completely innocent of this charge! The effectiveness of this governance in the press sector lies in its being the ideal solution to match the reality of journalism with the reality of the Internet environment.
So, how can the press and publishing sectors today benefit from this technology?
In fact, the press and publishing sectors today can benefit from the “block chain” technology in theory, but in practice it requires the availability of logical and necessary requirements, for example, in construction projects, it is not possible to build a residential group on the ruins of dilapidated random structures that did not respect the basic standards of equipment Construction, and in the press sector the same, there are basic standards that have been agreed upon since 2013, which are the recommendations of the aforementioned white paper for digital journalism, which identified five challenges, unfortunately not all of them have been respected to this day. Therefore, in my opinion, it is not possible for the press sector in Morocco to benefit from the blockchain technology as a basis for the governance of successful journalistic enterprises, unless there are answers to these four challenges, namely:
- Technological qualification of the media sector;
- developing digital content for journalism;
- uphold professional ethics;
- media training support;
- Finally, the development of press contracting according to innovative economic models.
We all recall what the current and former Moroccan officials of the media sector said on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2022, including:
- The general secretary of the National Syndicate of the Moroccan Press, Abdallah Al-Bakali, who declared with his usual audacity that all economic models of press entrepreneurship in Morocco have failed so far;
- Noureddine Moftah, President of the Moroccan Federation of Newspaper Publishers, who stated that what the press has reached today is the worst scenario that we did not expect;
- Mustafa Malouk, a former director of the Moroccan Channel 2, who stated that there is a global media system that is being prepared and that we have no place in it;
- Nabil Benabdallah, former information minister and head of the Progress and Socialism Party: who stated that politics and the media had entered a “vague and ambiguous” stage;
- In the field of training, the educational system is still accelerating the slow academic time in order to adapt the educational content with the requirements of the Internet environment, the specifics of training and strengthening digital skills.
What makes things worse is that the field of digital media content development that the Internet environment brought has become a victim of the trivial content revolution that has been called the “information glut”. Obesity Information The invasion of fake news Fake NewsThe thing that most complicated the process of searching for effective solutions, whether on the “formal” level of journalistic genres, languages, and dialects, or on the “objective” level in terms of the quality and usefulness of their contents, or the moral and value level.
Recent reports say that the field of the media and entertainment industry will be run by companies, institutions and people who do not have any knowledge of the media profession in the future. Do you read such reports that predict the future of media and journalism?
The new reality is that the field of the media industry has, since its inception, been linked to the power of the political elite, which we have experienced closely linked to the power of the pressure forces of the business and financial elite, but now we notice that the media industry has become, with globalization and social media platforms that have broken geographical boundaries, it is facing the entry of new actors and influencers, new professions, and unforeseen requirements. Precedent imposed innovative economic models that formed a break with the classic models, whether those related to financial, commercial or professional practices or related to the methods of organization and governance, in addition to the introduction of the concepts of “blockchain” and the rule of actors as individuals or groups that contributed to the emergence of a new global economy that brought an unprecedented industry not from Its means of production, economic model, or decentralized governance based on the intelligence of independent individuals and the intelligence of influential groups in all walks of life of societies, in all parts of the world that has become a small village. This new economy that turned all scales around is the economy of the so-called “content makers economy”.CRATOR CONTENU ECONOMY“.
The emergence of generative AI tools is forcing today’s journalists to think about the ways in which “automation” can improve their jobs or get rid of them. Is the future of journalism completely dependent on AI technologies and programs?
Artificial intelligence has become the focus of all aspects of human life without exception, and we have passed the stage of robot threat to work and human stability, and we have entered a new era that is characterized by cooperation between the robot with its smart mechanisms and algorithms and between humans, as it is used to improve human life, facilitate its tasks, and accelerate its pace and accuracy in an atmosphere From constructive integration, with added value at the level of quality of performance and preserving the environment, we are on the verge of a new era that digitization experts have called the generation of “humanizing” all aspects of human life, as it has become the basis for every scientific invention measured by the services provided by innovation to humans. Human Centricity As long as the media and the press are based on the process of producing media content (which, unfortunately, has not reached the stage of real industrialization in Morocco), it is obvious that the economy of “content makers” should depend mainly on journalists par excellence, which is a golden opportunity and not an obstacle to the development of the media sector.
At a time when we find audio and visual contents of an influential citizen who are followed by millions of viewers and those who are engaged in his channels and pages on the Internet, and he achieves imaginary wealth at a time when he had never studied journalism, but he benefited from the Internet environment for self-learning and strengthening his digital skills only, The disease has become known and the medicine as well!
By the way, we must praise the initiative of the Ministry of Education, which announced this April, its intention to update educational materials in schools with artificial intelligence materials, and I also praise the ongoing and unprecedented updating of the educational system of the Higher Institute of Journalism in Rabat, which is in the process of being prepared.
In your estimation, what is the viable economic model for the press in Morocco, in light of the dominance of artificial intelligence in the world?
In order not to prolong my speech and repeat what I said, and as long as the disease has become known and the medicine is also, the enemy is in front of (young and non-young journalists and those responsible for the sector as well) and the sea behind them, and they have nothing but honesty, patience, embracing digitization and artificial intelligence, within the framework of “individual intelligence” And “group intelligence” together, and delving seriously into the “free and inclusive Internet environment”, but it is currently controlled by those who have no professional experience, but despite this they reap huge profits through frivolous and immoral contents in the Internet market, which is increasingly marketing false content. In the absence of actors armed with professionalism and ethics.
And this is my last word.