Morocco’s journalists had a bad 2007 with plenty of nasty surprises, as the government continued to imprison journalists and seize newspapers, while insisting it was going to reform the press law. The king unsteadily juggled his desire to improve his image abroad with a temptation to curb the country’s independent media.

Journalists are among the first witnesses, and also the first victims, of the instability that plagues the Middle East. The political and religious divisions in Lebanon, the spectre of civil war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have deep repercussions on media workers, beyond national borders. The region’s chronic instability is used by political leaders as a permanent excuse to silence journalists, whose every criticism is seen as wilfully destabilising their regimes.