In our report we mentioned the French language news site, Le Desk, launched by Ali Amar, and some of the stories it has broken. Le Desk has also been running an ongoing investigation into government internet surveillance of Moroccan citizens. Aside from subscriptions, Le Desk says it has financial backing to the tune of $750,000 from various investors who have collaborated with Amar on his media ventures.
Then there is TelQuel, a French-language weekly magazine founded in 2010 by Ahmed Benchemsi. Benchemsi has been repeatedly pressured by the Moroccan government and in 2009, TelQuel disappeared from the newsstands temporarily after it published an opinion poll on the first ten years of King Mohammed's reign. TelQuel started an Arabic language edition, Nichane, in 2010 but it went out of business after the government leaned on companies to withdraw their advertising.
Arabic language news site Lakome.com was founded by Ali Anouzla in 2010 and made its name by publishing stories about the cost of maintaining the royal family and on the king's habit of taking long vacations. Lakome was subsequently blocked in May 2014, but it re-launched as Lakome2.com in August of last year, which as of March 2016 is still accessible online, in Morocco.
