A year after the withdrawal and then the dismissal of Jean-Jacques Bourdin, BFM TV took the decision to withdraw another journalist from its antenna. This is Rachid M’Barki, who presents the night’s newspaper between midnight and 4:30 am. The management announced to AFP that he was now “exempt from activity” while an internal investigation has been ongoing for 2 weeks.
“If the facts reported are correct, they are serious and reprehensible”
Rachid M’Barki is suspected of interference and outside influence. He would have broadcast information on the air without it being “validated by the usual channel, i.e. the editor-in-chief“. Within his company, the Society of Journalists (SDJ) of BFMTV comments: “If the facts reported are correct, they are serious and reprehensible”.
The controversy relates to one subject in particular: the economic forum between Morocco and Spain organized in June 2022, and in which the journalist indicated that he had been “made possible by the warming of diplomatic relations between the two countries since Spain’s recognition of the Moroccan Sahara”. A partisan term for Western Sahara, a region largely controlled by Morocco but claimed by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front. Hence the discomfort.
“Maybe I got tricked”
In fact, the investigation must determine “if this content was under any influence” and if the images used in the report “came from outside. For his part, Rachid M’Barki indicates to Politico that he has well “used information that (him) came from informants” and who don’t have “not necessarily followed the usual course of writing”. The professional added to our colleagues: “They were all real and verified (…) I’m not ruling anything out, maybe I was tricked, I didn’t feel like I was or that I was taking part in an operation of je I don’t know what otherwise I wouldn’t have done it”.
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