Cultural press in Morocco .. reunited to restore a lost glow

Nizar Al-Farawi-Rabat

Between nostalgia for the golden age of a cultural press that was leading a pioneering enlightening role in the Moroccan general scene, and a desire to transcend the shallow and shallow reality that pushed serious cultural and artistic material to the sidelines, the titles of the opening of the first season of the Moroccan Association for Cultural Press that finally saw the light were formed, in an effort to gather diaspora Distinguished class of media professionals, raising their voices isolated.

Embodying this will in connecting the past with the present and restoring the lost glow of a cultural media that remained until the end of the last century a true outlet for the creative movement - literary, intellectual and artistic - and its necessary mediator among the Moroccan public, the League launched its activity with a tradition that is intended to be annually, in which the media and cultural arena heals around honoring pioneers The cultural press in its various written, audio and visual platforms.

Through the faces of the memory of the audience and the readers, the National Library of Rabat guests celebrated, Friday, a journalistic practice that opened in front of generations of Moroccans channels of communication with various Moroccan, Arab and international creative arts, with limited means of work but with an inexhaustible professional passion and a toxic sense of duty.

Against the shallow
The establishment of this association came in accordance with a collective will and a widespread sense of imbalance, its president Mohamed Jalid says, “Cultural pages are the first thing sacrificed when advertising material comes out or an emergency file comes out.” Rather, she faces the charge of not contributing to higher sales, “without reasonable arguments or studies. Field, "he said.

It is therefore a step against "shallow sovereignty and degradation of taste in light of the invasion of media programs and materials without intellectual depth, deeply rooted in moral and aesthetic degradation, to which intentionally, and others without consciousness, contribute to the seriousness of the ongoing transformations that push surface and scandalous to the fore."

Speaking on behalf of a group of believers with the ability to continue the media message with cultural content, Mohamed Jalid stresses that the crisis is not fateful and that it is at the heart of the professional and ethical duty to defend the position of culture in the media as an ideal medium for defining cultural and artistic creativity, starting with the centrality of cultural action in every development project.

In the hearts of those present, it seemed far away that the time when culture was almost turning on television into a mass material through programs that achieve high viewership, attracting viewers at peak times, while the cultural depth was a general character not limited to pure cultural programs on Moroccan radio.

As for the written media, whole generations of literature lovers and practitioners arose, and a general taste of the weight of the cultural content of major newspapers was formed, even if it was predominantly speaking in the name of partisan currents.

Struggle and culture
It was remarkable that the Moroccan philosopher Mohamed Sabila - who was honored by this event within the media and cultural elite - evoked the profound enlightenment role that the Moroccan press had played in the past, noting the experience of cultural appendices that were hitting known dates with readers, and engaging in a frantic race to attract the brightest thinkers and writers And cover the most important cultural and artistic events and developments, locally and internationally.

These appendices and cultural pages were a front for expressing the most important intellectual currents within the Moroccan and Arab cultural forum, through direct contributions or dialogues that attract names such as Mohamed Abed Al-Jabri, Abdullah Al-Arwi and Taha Abdel Rahman, and the most famous columns were signed by elite writers and poets of Morocco Those who combine struggle and cultural activity at the same time.

The association had seen the light at a general founding meeting in Casablanca, last April, underlined in its statement a set of goals that include "defending (defending) the place of culture in media practice and expanding its space in public and private media, and contributing to the development of conditions for the practice of the press Cultural, and help the cultural journalist to perform all his tasks at best. "