('Gabriel Gonzalez' writes from Paris, France.)
The behavior of the French media establishment since the outset of the ethnic turmoil that has spread throughout the country has attracted a great deal of commentary, in particular in the blogosphere. Most recently, the local media have been more or less openly censoring coverage as a "public service". The official media explanation is that they are exercising their citizenly responsibility of avoiding fanning the flames of the unrest, so as not to give encouragement to the delinquents carrying out the violence. There is no doubt some truth to this, though it is not entirely consistent with the French media's enthusiasm in hyping other forms of "legitimate" social unrest: whether it be striking truck drivers, or firemen or police blocking public highways; discontented farmers or fisherman destroying property, burning down public buildings and vehicles; or public railway workers sabotaging transportation facilities or hijacking ferry boats; or even Palestinian suicide bombers "resisting" Israeli oppression or Iraqi "insurgents" fighting the American occupation.
Others have interpreted the relative downplaying of the violence by the French media as a sign of political correctness or "multiculturalism", i.e. an attempt to minimize the extent of the violence lest if reflect poorly on the perpetrators or play into the hands of the parties of the far right, such as the Front national. There are even claims that the U.S. media is engaged in similar sins of omission or distortion. I am even not entirely convinced there is much basis for this interpretation which seems little more than a projection by those making the claim of their own world views and biases (none of us of course are completely immune from this tendency).
In any event, neither explanation – an interest in contributing to restoring public order by not giving the perpetrators a wide audience or a desire to appease multiculturalists or far right extremists – addresses the crucial role that the French media establishment plays in preserving, promoting and protecting the national image of French grandeur and moral superiority by limiting the damage caused by the riots.
This has been a far more important factor in explaining French media coverage (or non-coverage) and presentation of the recent and still ongoing riots.
Consider: After the first few days of rioting, the French press had hardly begun to cover the violence, and none of the major dailies – Le Monde, Le Figaro or Libération – had given serious first page treatment (in particular, above the fold) to events that were of clear social, political and historical importance from the outset. All three papers were far too busy covering the allegations of secret CIA detention centers, first revealed in the Washington Post, and the continuing public transportation strike in Marseille. Both of these topics – the CIA and the labor strikes – fit in neatly with a French establishment obsession with defense of the "modèle français" – in both economic policy as well as foreign policy – that has dominated the recent political debate (and thus the establishment media debate) in the recent past, most notably in connection with economic reform proposals and the European constitution.
By contrast, race riots by unassimilated minorities do not fit well with the terms on which the defense of the French model as the centerpiece of virtually all recent French policy debate has been conducted, in particular the supposition that there is a universal societal interest in defending the entrenched rights of major labor unions, big state controlled companies, protected public service sector employees, early retirees with fat severance packages, as well as the interests of all of the other soon-to-retire boomers whose worldview defines the current establishment in power , and who have delusions of living off future generations (including presumably "immigrants") while continuing to point their fingers at the capitalists, imperialist Americans, occupying Jews, etc. as the cause of all of the world's ills.
By the fourth day of riots, the local French media establishment were devoting a great part of their "coverage" to attacking foreign (in particular American) media for supposedly exaggerating the gravity of the events in France: the main private broadcast channel TF1 (and its cable affiliate LCI) attacked CNN for comparisons with the 1992 L.A. riots – how ridiculous! Barely a hundred cars had been torched (we are now counting towards 8,000). The other major networks and newspapers were busy attacking the U.S. print media as well as Fox News for supposed hyperbole and unjustified meddling. More recently, the French Minister of Tourism has been making the rounds on French television and radio shows to discuss the "unwarranted" misrepresentation of the French disturbances by foreign – in particular American – media with the supposed aim of maliciously wooing away foreign tourists by slandering La République.
This concern of the French media for the protection of the national image – unmatched in any other major Western democracy – corresponds to both the recent practice of the French media as well as a long-term pattern dating back to the post-WWII "Vichy Syndrome". What characterizes this syndrome is a concerted effort on the part of the major social and political institutions – government, the main political parties, the press, academia –to ignore, deny, downplay, rationalize or excuse reprehensible behaviour, often collective, that reflects poorly on the Nation. The syndrome supposes a tacit agreement between all of these social actors, with the active complicity of a pliant population, aimed at protecting a national image at the expense of the truth or rectification of past injustices. (I have written about these relationships in the past in relation to French foreign policy generally.)
Some recent examples:
Even as of this date, the French media has devoted more space to the supposed injustices to African Americans revealed by "Katrina" – a natural disaster in a foreign country – as the riots in its own back yard.
In September and October, as numerous present and former French government officials and diplomats were being charged with receiving oil allocations in the Oil-For-Food scandal, the major papers had not publish a lead article on the scandal, and devoted as much attention to Bush's woes with Harriet Miers' nomination (completely misrepresented, by the way, in the French press).
Last month, as hundreds of French companies were revealed in the Volcker Report to have paid bribes to the Iraqi regime, the French media was paying more attention to charges against the U.S. Vice President's chief of staff for "illegally exposing" a CIA agent in violation of U.S. national security laws (again reflecting the distortions in the French establishment presentation). As dozens of Chirac's cronies in the governing party were being sentenced to prison terms earlier this month for corruption – including Chirac's former chief of staff – this received scant coverage in the French media, which were again far more concerned with Katrina, Lewis Libby, and George Bush's other woes.
A few days ago was the anniversary of the massacre by the French army of over a dozen unarmed civilians assembled in front of the Hotel Ivoire in Abidjan. This massacre had followed other incidents in which the French army gunned down unarmed Ivory Coast civilians. Even though these incidents were captured by live television cameras, none of the footage was broadcast on French TV. As a result, the French citizenry is blissfully ignorant of these event. By contrast, U.S. malfeasance at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has received several hundred times more coverage in Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération and French television news channels. As a result, the French citizenry is entirely ignorant of these events. (It should also be noted that several French policeman caught on film this week mercilessly beating defenseless adolescents in the banlieux have been detained and charged. Unlike in the case of Rodney King or the fabricated incident of Mohammed Al-Dura, you will never see this tape on French TV.)
In April of this year, Amnesty International published a damning report criticizing the French police for its abusive treatment of Arab and African minorities, including murder and torture. This report received virtually no coverage in the French press, left, right or center. Too damaging to the national image. Again, the plight of black victims of hurricane Katrina or the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib or the horrors of Guantanamo have received several hundred times more coverage in France. The same applies to recent reports describing French prison conditions as among the worst in Europe: nary a word in the local French press. Again, the French citizenry is completely in the dark about these reports.
The role of the press as an key participant in what is described as the Vichy Syndrome goes much further in explaining the initial hesitation, the subsequent defensiveness, and now the outright censorship of the French media in covering the current ethnic unrest.
For reasons that I will come back to in a later piece, this does not bode well for France's ability to deal with the social, political, security and economic problem of assimilation of its ethnic underclass without effective political representation within the terms of the current framework of debate – shared by all of the political parties, from the Communists and Socialists to the Gaullists and rightist Nationalists – centered around the idea of a unique French "modèle social" in which there is no room for the demands of that underclass.
Post Script: The best synopsis I have read on the events in France is John Vinocur's recent article in the International Herald Tribune.