HIBAPRESS
The electronic newspaper "Al-Jadida Express" broadcast a video on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, in which a young man calls for killing and using violence, within the framework of the protest movement currently taking place in Morocco. The mentioned newspaper also broadcast images of minors, within this video, giving statements and comments, and crammed them into the context we mentioned.
Within the framework of the automatic response procedure, which was established by the National Press Council, in accordance with a special regulation, based on Article 2 of Law No. 90.13, which provides for the establishment of the Council, and according to the provisions of Article 39 of the aforementioned law, the members of the Interim Committee for Managing the Affairs of the Press and Publishing sector, referred this file to the Ethics Committee of the Profession and Disciplinary Issues, which studied it to take the necessary action in accordance with the ethics charter of the journalism profession. The Interim Committee recalls in this regard that the ethics charter stipulates in the third paragraph of the section on responsibility towards society, the following: "The journalist is committed not to publish and broadcast materials that glorify violence, crime, and terrorism", and paragraph nine of the charter in the same section stipulates the following: "One of the responsibilities of ethical journalism is to protect minors and their images in socially sensitive cases, and they should not be the subject of videos to which they are lured for the purpose of free provocation, or to be the target of videos that include violence, moral decay, and the decline of human values, otherwise, it will be considered a breach of the provisions of this charter." Based on these considerations, the Ethics Committee of the Profession and Disciplinary Issues deliberated on this file and will take appropriate decisions to protect society from the threats and dangers that may frighten people and affect security and stability, as well as to fortify the journalism profession from practices that violate its honor and ethics. The Interim Committee for Managing the Affairs of the Press and Publishing sector affirms its commitment to protecting the ethics of the profession, and calls on all media outlets to respect the provisions of the charter and the law in covering the protests, and also alerts some media outlets to the need to use legal terms more accurately, where a distinction should be made between arrest and detention, the accused and the suspect… and other terms that should be used in their correct place.
