Morocco
Morocco’s state-influenced media field is built around a public broadcasting and news core controlled by the executive, alongside a privately owned press whose leading titles are tied by ownership and patronage to the monarchy and the wider establishment. The dominant development of the current cycle is structural: the consolidation of the public audiovisual sector under the state broadcaster SNRT, which has absorbed the previously separate channel 2M and the Medi1 broadcast outlets, drawing assets that were once privately or mixed-owned into the state-controlled perimeter. The result is a more concentrated public-media architecture overseen by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, with the print and agency components arranged around it.
Morocco combines a centralised public broadcasting and news apparatus with a privately owned press that operates within boundaries acceptable to the palace. The state’s audiovisual reach runs through SNRT, the national public broadcaster, whose multiple television channels and radio networks have been expanded through the 2025 consolidation that brought 2M and the Medi1 broadcast assets into its perimeter. The official news flow runs through the state news agency Maghreb Arabe Presse (MAP), reorganised by Law No. 02-15 of 2018 and supervised by the communication ministry. Around this public core sits a private press in which the most influential titles are linked to centres of economic and political power, whether through the royal investment vehicle Al Mada, through proprietors close to the establishment such as the Saudi-British businessman who controls Le Matin’s publisher, or through proximity to senior governing figures. Across both the public and private spheres, editorial caution prevails on the monarchy, the security services and Western Sahara, and no statutory safeguard insulates editorial decisions from ownership or political pressure. On press freedom, Morocco rose fifteen places to 105th of 180 in the 2026 RSF Index, with a score of 50.55, up from 120th in 2025; RSF characterises the improvement as real but uneven, noting that the absence of jailed or killed journalists distinguishes Morocco from harsher environments while quieter constraints, lawsuits, financial pressure and editorial influence, continue to shape what is published.
State Media Monitor maps five Moroccan outlets, arranged in two tiers. The State-Controlled (SC) tier comprises SNRT, the public broadcaster that now incorporates 2M and the Medi1 broadcast assets through the public-audiovisual consolidation, and MAP, the state news agency; 2M is carried as a State-Controlled outlet following its absorption into SNRT’s perimeter. The Captured Private (CaPr) tier comprises Maroc Soir / Groupe Le Matin, the privately owned publisher of Le Matin whose ownership and editorial line align it with the palace, and La Nouvelle Tribune, the privately owned weekly and digital title whose family ownership, establishment-linked minority stake and consistent editorial caution place it within the captured-private category. The principal change this cycle is the migration of formerly private or mixed-ownership broadcast assets into the state-controlled tier through the SNRT consolidation, alongside the decomposition of the former royal-house-linked media cluster, whose remaining components are now mapped as individual outlets. The picture is of a media field in which the state has deepened its direct control of the audiovisual sector while the private press remains aligned with the monarchy and the establishment through ownership ties rather than formal mandate.
June 2026