Even before the death of Hassan II in July 1999, a few Moroccan journalists have begun to write, though timidly, about his legacy between the 1960s and late 1980s. This paper is predicated on the assumption that the discussion of issues related to instances of violence during the rule of Hassan II was meant to prepare the country to a new political and psychological environment, as the Makhzan is no longer able to control its hold over historical information. Using Robert Park argument on “news as a form of knowledge,” I claim that this journalistic history of what was known as the Years of Lead/sanawat al-rasas is presumed to re-orient the Moroccan public more than inform its constituents. As the country began to un-shelve its history of human rights abuse, Hassan II allowed a new generation of “independent” journalists to write these histories, and therefore make unusual events and stories of violence and abuse cease to be news by the time he died. I argue that these newspapers and magazines played a major role in the national transition from the controlled-state system of information to more “open” public debate about taboo questions allowing the state to slowly prepare its citizens to the political trauma of the 1970s. I also claim that the state succeeded through a number of journalists to create a new postcolonial vulgate that introduced a new set of historical themes, and therefore affected the historiographical narrative of the country in the last decade.