('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.
MSM dissembling is deliberately aimed at under-reporting the extent of the violence, its causes, and its coordination.
The MSM is doing this to protect Left-wing policies and policy-makers - the policies and the people who - AFTER THE PERPS - are most responsible for what going down in France and Belgium.
Their policies of welfare, multiculturalism and appeasement created the necessary conditions for islamo-radicals to encourage acts of violence and defiance with impunity - first (and for the last three years) against Jews, and now against any who they feel threaten their hegemony over the banlieues.
After the flames subside, after the dust settles, after hundreds of islamothugs are imprisioned, THEN the governments of Europe will have to contend with the REALLY TOUGH aspects of the intifada: how to roll back 35 years of decadent Leftist policies.
If the European people of Europe are brave, then they will elect NEW leaders who are unafraid of doing what they must in order to protect Europe from the ingrateful unassimilated immigrants who seek to take over.
It would help if - after that - Europeans started having children again. Maybe they will; maybe fighting for their cultures' survival will instill enough pride in them to make them WANT to project European culture into the future. We'll see. We will see.
They will either fight and win IN OUR LIFETIMES, or Europe will become - FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES - re-occupied by the "Saracens" - by about 2020, according to the NIC - the National Intelligence Council.
ALSO:
The UK GUARDIAN published this comment/"analyis" in a news article:
"Today, the National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen is due to appear on RTL radio in advance of a demonstration in central Paris by his supporters tomorrow. Many believe the riots have played into the hands of extremists such as Le Pen."
To the Left, the rioters are the aggrieved party, and those who have predicted this intifada - like Le Pen - are extremists.
Maybe what Le Pen has been proposing regarding immigration all these years ONLY SEEMED EXTREME at the time!? Maybe now many of his immigration proposals are APT - if they're not too late!
REMEMBER: from 1930-1939 most Brits thought Winston Churchill was a jingoist and warmonger unecessarily ramping up fear of tyrants on the continent, like Herr Hitler. In fact, Churchill was one of the lone critics of the Munich Agreement which ceded the Sudatenland to Nazism. Now we see that he was right the whole time. Hindsight is like that.
While it is certainly true that Le Pen proposes MANY abhorrent policies, he was 99% right on immigration. To call him an extremist in this context is wrong - just as it is wrong to color the politics of the situation as clearly benefitting Le Pen.
Sarkozy is just as tough on the immigrant problem - (PLUS: he's the son of immigrants himself!) - without the obvious and abhorrent Le Pen "baggage" - and, in fact, he is the frontrunner for 2007.
So, why didn't the Left-wing Guardian write that ther riots benefits him!?
Could it be that the Leftist Guardian doesn't want to promote a right-of-center candidate WHO CAN ACTUALLY WIN!?
Could it be that they would like a Le Pen versus Villepin race in 2007 (because that's the only way (a) Villepin can win! and (b) Sarlozy can lose!)!?
DAMN STRAIGHT. AND THIS IS EXACLTY HOW THE MSM WILL SPIN THES PARIS INTIFADA AND THE EFFORTS TO QUELL IT: TO HURT SARKOZY AND HELP VILLEPIN.]
Man, IF only our MSM could be as reliably optimistic as theirs. Almost makes you jealous, huh?
I like the "Car-B-Q" metric of Tim Blair and Mark Steyn. It may not run in French papers, but it would look good in North American media as one of the more useful data points.
Though perhaps less useful now that the targets are schools et. al.
See also this excellent piece from Richard Posner, over at The New Editor
I'll add this note from The Brussels journal, which adds some direct quotes highlighting the political agenda of the media's coverage. The finale is also quite apropos:
In France, we see the EU path to socialism taken to its logical conclusion. Its contradictions must rip it apart, and in time, something new arise in its place. The only questions are when it will fall and fail utterly in a way that delegitimizes and shakes the existing power structures - and what shall then come in its place. At this point, no-one really knows the answer to either question.
If that is a worrisome prospect, however, it is somewhat comforting to know that recurrences of this sort of complete failure (like the 10,000 plus French citizens who dies in a summer heatwave) can be relied upon. They will provide unending ammunition to use against those who seek to introduce the French segregation and socialism model here in North America - ammuntion we would do well to use, given the observable consequences.
So Gabriel, I'm afraid I don't follow:
Most recently, the local media have been more or less openly censoring coverage as a "public service".
Seemed plausible, but a cursory examination reveals that the continuing unrest is still the top headline on all major newspapers and TV networks
This is well put, Gabriel. The French have always had a certain inward view that is resistant to all possible criticisms. The French will not change, cannot change. Since the revolution, the course of France has been fixed. There have been no more intellectuals of the stature of Voltaire, Pascal, Descartes. Sartre was a deluded fool, Foucault was a moron. France has no intellectual leaders to pull it from the abyss.
SAO (#5):
To contest Gabriel's point about French media engaging in self-censorship, it seems one would have to debate the media itself. For example, here is the lede from an article in Thursday's Guardian (sic):
Your scan of the websites of Le Monde, Figaro, Liberation, TV5, and other French media outlets is useful, but requires two caveats.
Are we talking about censorship here or media bias?
I'm not an expert on French media, but to see them aping the purblind American Left's line on Katrina and Plame is one more indication that there is no more French culture and no more French nation. That stuff about being colonized by Disney turned out to be true.
Superb Gabriel!
PD Shaw (#8)
Are we talking about censorship here or media bias?
I think we are talking about a media bias in a such advanced degree that reaches censorship.
It is not easy for a person living in a anglosaxon or anglosaxon-derived culture of freedom to understand the level of manipulation that the Continental European media develops. The Dissident Frogman publishes many articles concerning it.
Right, France is not the only country that suffers it. The most striking example was the overthrown of the Spanish goverment due to a well organized leftist media blitz between 3/11 and 3/14 based, as we know now, in fabricated evidence.
The consequence is that readers and users of right wing newsites in Internet are growing at a rate of 100% anual.
I think that people in the end like the truth, the problem is that no mass media dares to offer it here.
Oh, The Dissident Frogman is back on strike. How French!
I miss him.
It seems to me that the French general public must complicit in this media bias. It's not the media alone that fosters this terrible "reporting". Surely there is some other news source available that accurately informs the public.
It seems to me that the French general public must complicit in this media bias. It's not the media alone that fosters this terrible "reporting".
It is true that there are many groups in France that support Socialism since they receive a lot of money in subsidies from the State. They don't mind about anything else as long as the cash continues flowing.
It is a degenerative form of Democracy that in Germany ended in Nationalsocialism.
Surely there is some other news source available that accurately informs the public.
You cannot imagine what is going on here, and that is good, because says a lot of good things about the anglosaxon world based on freedom.
In my country, Spain, left wing parties, when they are in office, pursue a deliberate policy aimed at controlling information. How do they get this? It is quite simple, the government controls licenses to broadcast radio and TV and all the State advertising. When Socialist are in office they ban opposition media from new licenses (now concerning Digital TV and Radio) and the money from advertising. In Spain the State is 39% of the Economy, so a mass media which is against it looses a big bunch of possible revenues in advertising. Translate this into French, where State and State owned companies represent most of the Economy. Who dares to tell what the Government does not want to hear?
The funny part of this is that later come the foreign mass media and says: "the overwhelming opinion in Spain is for (or against) this or that". Of course, overwhelming.
Some data to support my statements:
A link in English regarding some of these internal issues.
An example on the degree the media is controlled in Europe: 3/11 official version, which overthrew a right-wing government, is simply false. Of course, the mass media in Spain overwhelmingly does not support this statement.
(Pathetic)
Retaking the original focus in France, what says Gabriel is true. The media has tried to focus the unrest only in Economic problems while downplaying (or just censoring) the Islamic face of the problem. Young protesters shout Allah Akbar! and their real objective seems to be to build an Islamic autonomy inside France. The danger is increased by the virulent Nationalisms just at the other side of the border in the Spanish regions of Catalonia and the Basque country, which basically want the same.
Gabriel has done a great job bringing into the light the problem. I know it is hard to believe, so it is for an European to assume that a house can just be blown away by wind gusts (as a child I considered ridiculous that scene from the Wizard of Oz) but it can happen. Simply the conditions in other places are different.
In Europe Socialism and Nationalsocialism are not just political elections, but a way in which Democracy degenerates and is driven further away from its original significance of the government of free persons.
I'm currently doing the research for a commentary on the Watts Riots of 1965. Just a little for you here; at first ALL the blame for the Watts Riot was placed on a TV Station that had a helicopter hovering over the riots. Everybody in LA was in a state of shock because nobody knew there was a problem. Part of the "solution" in LA is French: a Media blackout of any gang fights, any info that might make Blacks or Mexicans look bad, and further censorship that leaks into things like sports and entertainment coverage. The other part is to toss billions into any hair brained scheme that will shut people up.
However, we have the internet, a place where almost everyone I know goes for at least some of their news. All are now convinced that the media is lying about almost everything.
This controlled media may be where "Western Democracies" are heading.
All are now convinced that the media is lying about almost everything.
No, someone may suspect that the media is lying about almost everything, to be convinced you need proofs, evidence, facts...
More (nasty) links on what is considered the Freedom of Speech in some European countries.
What to do with a political comentator who dares to talk about freedom:
Barcelona Judge regrets terrorists didn't kill Jimenez-Losantos
What to do with a Radio channel that dares to tell the people what the politicians do not want to hear:
Losantos: The anti-freedom strategy in Spain is to liquidate Cope Radio
It is indeed hard to express right-wing opinions publicly in Continental Europe.