Issandr Amrani has a good piece out on the recent closure of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, Morocco’s first publication to push the newly expanding boundaries of free speech at the end of King Hassan’s rule ten years ago. I have enjoyed reading Le Journal for four years now and its state-ordered demise is a major blow to Morocco’s experiment with press freedom. In a different but related story, the editor of another outspoken French-language weekly (TelQuel), Réda Benchemsi, has a great editorial this week on Morocco’s National Press Agency (MAP) becoming a propaganda tool. Although this is nothing new, Benchemsi writes that today the MAP now acts as the sun whose rays dictate which way Moroccan elites (“a field of sunflowers”) orient themselves.