Announcing it would cease production after nearly 30 years, Liberté’s closure in April was decried by journalists, scholars, and politicians in Algeria and out. Many see in its demise a broader censorship campaign, as the government clamps down on criticism emerging in the 2019 Hirak. While the true reason behind the closure is difficult to ascertain, it comes at the head of a long history of language politics in the Algerian media. Sarah Miles, a PhD student researching Algerian and global intellectual history, puts the recent closure of Liberté and other newspapers in their historical context. 

The French colonial government of Algeria used language to discriminate against non-Europeans in the press. Through much of the twentieth century, most major newspapers were published in French and operated by European settlers. They enjoyed a healthy readership with several papers printing tens of thousands of copies per day. 

Arabophone press, on the other hand, was heavily censored. Arabic and anticolonial nationalism were conflated to such an extent that the language’s very use came to be seen as dangerous.

The Algerian War of Independence only made this association more pronounced. While French newspapers were permitted to continue publishing, nearly all Arab-language publications were forced to close in the first year of conflict. 

Despite the censorship, underground Arabic media like El Moudjahid played an important role in fomenting support for the nationalist cause, publishing news of the war and ideological information to Algerians.

After independence, many newspapers banned by the French re-established themselves as public presses supported by the new government. El Moudjahid became the mouthpiece of the FLN and the country’s first post-independence newspaper, Ech-Chaâb, was launched that same year. With this support, the 1960s saw a veritable explosion of publications despite a limited access to printers, ink, and advertising.

Though protected by constitutional law, these new papers were not free from political influence as the country undertook its project of anti-colonial state-building. The state funded major presses, exercised oversight and periodically intervened in editorial decisions. After the first few years of independence, sustained political pressure and natural evolutions in priorities led to the departure of many French journalists as presses sought to “Algerianize” their staff.

A more significant political shift occurred when Houari Boumedienne took power in 1965. Major presses were reorganized, falling in line under editors sympathetic to the new president. Some journalists were arrested and others fired, usually on partisan grounds.

Following Boummediene’s ascent, financial and political pressures limited the expansion of the press. Only state-approved publications were permitted and only one daily and ten weekly newspapers were launched in these two decades.

Oversight, however, did not mean there was no capacity for editorial independence within the press. Journalists were able to subtly critique the regime and stake positions on domestic and international policy. If readers’ options were limited between papers partly or fully funded by the state, control did not silence disagreement.

Through this era, language remained an important aspect of journalism. Despite attempts to increase Arabic-language literacy, rates of literacy in French remained significantly higher through the early 1970s. A much larger number of French-language papers were established in this first decade of independence than Arabic-language ones. Of the approximately fifty newspapers launched between 1962 and 1965, only five were in Arabic. Fewer survived the decade.

This impacted public perception of the press and its representation of Algerian society. Francophone media in the 1960s was more likely to see Algeria as part of a secular, socialist, internationalist global movement, in part informed by the large number of French militant contributors. In addition, French literacy was concentrated amongst elites, fuelling the idea that its media reflected only a narrow segment of Algerian society.

In turn, they were less likely to address debates about identity, culture, or Islam than their arabophone counterparts. Arabophone radio and, later, television, were important sites of such debates, but the printed press remained fairly divided through the 1980s. 

By the 1980s, however, a sense that public information was being stymied motivated over a thousand Algerian journalists to take action. In 1988, they formed the Mouvement des Journaliste Algerian (MJA). The MJA pressured the government to liberalize media laws and introduce more fundamental freedoms, eventually leading to the right to privately owned press.

More than a dozen publications were launched in subsequent years, including El Watan and Liberté, revitalizing the country’s media landscape.

The new private press was vital during the “Black Decade.” Though many outlets avoided sensitive questions after the 1992 elections were cancelled, the private press had the opportunity to go where others wouldn’t.

But the private press also became subject to a new pressure; that of targeted violence. Over the decade more than 50 journalists were killed. Though the “Black Decade” was a complex conflict, francophone journalists were disproportionately targeted,  undoubtedly fuelled by the perception that they represented the interests of a colonial and international elite.

Debates about the role of different language media in Algerian society has continued through into the 21st century.

In the last twenty years, a number of francophone publications including Le Matin, La Tribune, and La Nation have been forced to close, citing diminishing revenues and sales. As with Liberté, political pressure is likely to have played its part. In the last several years, journalists working for French-language outlets been imprisoned, with others in lengthy pre-trial detentions.

Interpreted as a black-and-white struggle between authoritarianism and democracy, the collapse of the francophone press has certainly been aided by the longstanding belief that such media is ‘foreign’, anti-Algerian, and neo-colonial.

With its adherents spanning a range of political ideologies both in the state and society, this idea is essential for understanding how moves to restrict civil society are enabled, reasoned, and justified.

It is true not just of Algeria but of the wider Maghreb, where similar campaigns against progressive reformisms have found resonance in popular fears of neo-colonial interference. 

Some 60 years after independence, North Africa’s politics of language continues to shape its future.

Sarah K. Miles is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying Global and French history. Her dissertation focuses on left-wing publishing and international solidarity in France, Quebec, and Algeria in the 1960s and ‘70s, though she is more broadly interested in the social and intellectual history of the media, decolonization and post-colonialism, and the far left in the francophone world.