Any of you who have seen me over the past 10 days knows how
furious I get anytime I read or hear the French media trying to stuff
down our throats their self-serving
lying charges (those against Aznar,
Bush, and
Blair, i.e., anybody whom they don't feel any sympathy with).
So when I read that the
Mémorial de Caen
was organizing a conference with Jean-Marie Colombani, among others
("QUELLE LIBERTÉ POUR L'INFORMATION DANS UN MONDE INQUIÉTANT ?",
organized in tandem with
Les Amis de l'hebdomadaire La Vie and
Reporters sans Frontières), I knew I had to attend. I wanted to give
Le Monde's
director a piece of my mind (in a diplomatic manner, natch). Three
hours before it started at 7 pm on March 23, 2004, I jumped into my
trusty jalopy, and drove the 260 km to Caen, arriving just in the nick
of time.
And sure enough, the first thing any of the five
intervenants did (with a constant wry smile on his face) was to attack the
lies
of politicians, ridicule the partisanship of the media, and bemoan the
jingoism of the population (meaning those of the US, the UK, and Aznar's
Spain exclusively,
bien sûr). It was
Jean-Marie Charon, "Sociologue des médias" (whatever that means), who opened the
débat — the others being (left to right on the admittedly unclear photo) Colombani, Walter Wells, Directeur de l'
International Herald Tribune (beard), Jean-Jacques Lerosier, Grand reporter à
Ouest-France, and Jacqueline Papet, Rédactrice-en-chef de
RFI, with the moderators answering to the names of Daniel Junqua, Journaliste et Vice-président de
RSF, and Jean-Claude Escaffit, Journaliste à
La Vie et Directeur des
Amis de La Vie.
Before I left Paris, I'd reviewed and written down (in
telegraph-style) a handful of arguments: these ranged from the Iraqis
quoted
in Reason,
on Iraq the Model, and
in Le Monde itself, to
Doug's post on
Le Monde's
partisan mistranslation of
Michael Ignatieff's piece in the
New York Times.
The only problem was a rather big one, I learned as a I
headed for my seat: questions would not be permitted, except in written
form on small pieces of paper handed over to one of the animators. So I
knew I had to pay close attention if I wanted to find an appropriate
moment when to jump in. And I would obviously not have time to develop
any of the arguments (especially since Eskaffit seemed to be a control
freak).
It
happened towards the end. There was a brief lull as Wells was about to
make his last extensive remarks. Suddenly everybody turned to me as I
let out : "Je pense que nous devons tous remercier les médias français
pour leur admirable abilité à détecter les mensonges. Mais je ne
comprends pas pourquoi ces spécialistes en la matière ignorent des
sujets qui ont été traités dans le
Herald Tribune,
par exemple." (This was punctuated by Eskaffit's protests on his mike,
you realize.) "Nous avons pu y lire des articles détaillant ce qu'on
pourrait taxer de mensonges dans le camp de la paix, comme
le fait que les Allemands, les Russes, et les Français avaient pas mal d'affaires avec les autorités baasistes, et que
Total devait avoir un contrat exclusif avec Saddam Hussein. Pourquoi les médias français n'en font-ils pas autant état que de ce qui concerne les Ricains, les Rosbifs, et les Espagnols?"
Eskaffit was growing increasingly more vocal in asking/telling me to keep quiet (shades of
Chirac?) — he claimed that "
de toutes façons",
nobody could hear me — so seeing the end approaching (and having a hard
time competing against a microphone), I pulled out my final ace — the
final ace being a book, which I held above my head. (Yes, there did seem
to be a somewhat theatrical element to this scene; why do you ask?) "Et
en matière de mensonges, il y a ce livre d'un rédacteur de
La Croix, qui a été licencié pour l'avoir publié, qui s'appelle
Comment la presse nous a désinformés sur l'Irak. Et qui raconte les partis pris des Français pour diaboliser
Bush, pour sanctifier
Chirac, et pour communier avec les partis de la 'paix'."
Even a few audience members had by now started to tell me
to keep quiet, but that seemed an appropriate place to end anyway, so
with that I sat down.
As for Eskaffit, he went on talking to the
intervenants…
ignoring completely what I had said. (While a couple of people behind
me asked to see the book.) Well, I felt I had done my blogger's duty, so
to speak, so I sat back, pretty content with myself.
Then, as Junqua made his last remarks, I understood that some people
had heard me; the
RSF moderator surprised me by pulling out
his own copy of
Alain Hertoghe's book
(which he had in his briefcase), and explained that it provided a
negative view of the French media during the Iraq war. But then he added
that there was another book, detailing the French press's doings during
the
first Gulf war, with a positive slant, and that one could
not read the first book without comparing it to the second. He tried to
conclude that
Hertoghe's book was a partisan "brûlot" that was not very friendly to his colleagues. (This from a
colloque
which had just declared that, happily, the old tradition in the press
of refusing to criticize one's colleagues had now become "
caduc"!)
I wasn't going to let him get away with that as the final
word, so I let out another comment: "Les médias ont complètement
censuré ce livre!" (But Eskaffit immediately started interrupting
again.)
Afterwards, I went up to speak to some of the
intervenants. Wells asked to see
Hertoghe's book, which he wanted to check out. As for Junqua, he admitted it was news to him that the
La Croix editor had been fired as a result of the book's publication.
So, all in all, a satisfying 10 minutes. (But hardly
worth doing again, not at that distance. At least not without a couple
of chums to have a drink with, afterwards.)
