In this month of November, several dozen publishers of independent media (over 85 thus far) have signed an appeal to “Open the windows, read the independent media!”. It contains these words:
Free, independent, and pluralistic sources of information are what make a democratic society. Today our democracy is endangered by a dominant media system which has just inflicted on us two months of a public debate centred around Eric Zemmour and a news agenda which has been mediocre to put it mildly.
As soon as this text was made public, we added our signature because it expresses a conception of journalism which has been guiding us for eight years now. At opposite poles from the Orientalist imagery and biased grids of analysis which reduce the Maghreb and the Middle East to terrorism and Islam, Orient XXI has tried to propose an image of the diversity and richness of that region, its cultures, its peoples. We have done so thanks to the contributions of many journalists and academics, diplomats and searchers located around the Mediterranean basin, because we believe that their intersecting perspectives help us understand the world.
Our efforts have met with success, since our readership is growing by leaps and bounds. Between the first of January and 6 November 2021, we have had 2 million visits, which represents an increase of 43% cover the same period in 2020 (source: Google Analytics). Our weekly newsletter has 13,000 subscribers and we have launched another one in Arabic; we have inaugurated an Italian section in addition to our five other languages, French, Arabic, English, Persian, and Spanish.
And we have several projects planned for the months ahead:
➞ an experimentation of the podcast format starting with a four episode series about the life of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser;
➞ a dossier dealing with the Algerian war of independence will be posted over a period of several months with contributions from historians on both shores of the Mediterranean;
➞ in the context of the French presidential election there will be a second instalment of our long investigation into the pro-Israel lobby in France, this time focusing on the positions of the various candidates.
From the every outset, we opted for a principle of free access (and no advertising) in order to reach the largest possible audience. However, in order to pursue our activity and accomplish the program described above, we need to raise 40,000 euros (46,000 dollars) by the end of the year. This depends on you. We need your donations (two thirds of which are tax-exempt in France) to enable Orient XXI to bring a breath of fresh air into the media landscape.
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