The New Watchdogs Page #8

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has dinner once a month.

Pseudo-rebel

Naturally, Michel Field is not

the only pseudo-rebel on the airwaves.

The market churns them out.

Revolutionaries of the world,

disunite!

With no leader or star,

you can't be caught.

Get your kicks demolishing power.

One of the most successful

is Philippe Val.

His image as a protest singer

earned him the top job

at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The press is sad.

It's sad because it's full

of lukewarm, cautious, boring stuff.

There's not much humor in the press.

We see him late at night

with Michel Field,

boasting about making fun of TF1.

- You stitched them up.

- They got it in the ass!

Twenty years later...

Media news:

Val is named head of France Inter radio

by the director of Radio France,

himself directly appointed

by President Sarkozy.

He quickly fired two humorists

who were deemed

too cocky by the powers that be.

You can mix genres

but you have to be careful.

Give me one example

of a journalist

who started out

as you might say a rebel,

a non-conformist,

who wasn't either

quietly dropped or bought.

There's no alternative.

The system spits out

everything it can't digest.

You can't sit in the presenter's chair

without paying for it somehow.

All the top channels for all the family.

Seven sports channels by satellite.

The news market,

instead of providing pluralism,

manufactures a handful

of celebrity journalists

that the media compete to grab

to boost their market share.

For the se roving journalists,

hopping between

public and private outlets

to suit their careers,

there are two rules:

Push the brand

but never disparage

a potential future employer.

The Difference Is Independence.

Why did you move

from France Inter to Europe 1

after saying, "I don't accept offers

from privately-owned stations.

"I get up at 3 a.m. because I like it

and I believe in public broadcasting."

Don't you know Europe 1

is owned by Lagardere?

A friend at Radio France

once said to me,

"Your family is the radio,

first and foremost."

- Didn't you know it two years ago?

- Of course I did.

But you've followed the same path,

Marc-Olivier Fogiel.

A career is made of accelerations,

some splits, and continuity.

We've heard you speak out

for public broadcasting too.

But I didn't say, like you did,

that it fascinated me.

I didn't say

it's the only place I want to work.

There are certainly big differences

between public and private broadcasters

but the gap is shrinking.

One symptom of the situation

is the way the celebrities

of private TV and radio networks

casually transfer the mselves

to the public networks and vice-versa.

When the leading players care so little

about the role

of public broadcasting,

it signifies a big step backwards.

Speaking of players and transfers,

winter 2010-2011 was a transfer window

that FIFA would have envied.

Jacques Julliard kicked off.

Disappointed by Denis Olivennes,

he left Le Nouvel Observateur

to join Marianne.

Laurent Joffrin quit Libration

to replace Olivennes,

who took over the captaincy of Europe 1

from Alexandre Bompard,

who became CEO of La Fnac,

the job vacated by Denis Olivennes

a few months earlier.

Early in the New Year,

Nicolas Poincar left France Info

for Europe 1,

replacing Nicolas Demorand,

who took the helm of Libration,

while Arlette Chabot left France 2

to become editor-in-chief at Europe 1.

At the same time Erik Izraelewicz,

after stints at Les Echos

and La Tribune,

returned to Le Monde

to replace Eric Fottorino as director.

That is what

"pluralism of information" is made of.

A game of musical chairs

by a few interchangeable journalists

who feel at home everywhere.

At first, we had only two TV channels.

Now there are dozens!

We had three important radio stations.

Now there are hundreds!

Now there's the Internet.

Nothing can be hushed up for long.

As Duhamel keeps saying,

the multiplication of media outlets

ensures pluralism of information.

But when competition is king,

news is a product that has to be sold.

One kind of information

is easy to make,

very cost-effective,

and sold everywhere.

THE LAW AND ORDER SHOW

Delinquency and violence

are rarely out of the news nowadays.

A worrying rise

in violence in nursery

and elementary schools...

"Baby thugs",

the rarely reported issue

of violent 3 to 13-year-olds.

The police call the rise "alarming".

As we all know,

delinquency has risen this year...

A rise in casual crimes with violence...

But this trend has not dispelled

the sense of insecurity.

In Cherbourg, for example,

the shopkeepers are sick

of robberies and vandalism.

Don't panic,

but the holiday period

is fraught with danger.

First, this horrific murder...

A ghastly tragedy in Marseilles...

The women

were savagely murdered...

For planning to kidnap, rape

and torture a young girl...

Missing? Kidnapped?

Alive or dead?

Casual crime is a key issue

five months before the elections.

Over the years, crime stories

have come to hog the headlines

of newspapers, radio and TV.

This was confirmed by a report

published in June 2009

by the National Audiovisual institute's

statistics office.

In the past ten years,

on the six terrestrial TV networks,

coverage of murders

and other forms of violence

has increased fourfold.

The sickening case

of pedophilia in Boulogne,

where several siblings

were rented out for sex...

They look like ordinary people.

Taxi driver, baker's wife, clergyman...

Seventeen adults have been charged

with raping

up to twenty children for years

and perhaps even prostituting them.

The Outreau pedophilia trial

was easily the most reported case

in the past ten years.

During the eight-week trial,

the four main national dailies

- Le Monde, Le Figaro,

Libration and Le Parisien -

led with the crime story 24 times

and devoted 343 articles to it.

Over the same period,

they printed just three articles

on a report by the WHO

establishing that bad air and water

kill over three million

children under five each year.

Court hearing in camera

Dominique Weil was one of 13

defendants who were acquitted.

He's a worker priest who lived

for 15 years in the housing complex

that featured so largely in the news.

This was in Le Parisien:

"The Outreau drama is set against

a backdrop of social deprivation

"in an area where alcoholism,

"incestuous behavior and pedophilia

are almost part of the culture."

In Le Monde:

"There are five or six

similar cases in Boulogne.

"It's like a gangrenous infection

in the housing complexes.

You toss back a kid

like you toss back a beer."

"Is Outreau's drab housing complex

under a curse?

"More probably,

"like many similar complexes

in northwest France and elsewhere,

"it's the victim of an explosive blend

"of unemployment, alcohol,

idleness and squalor.

Incest is never far away."

That was in Le Figaro.

No comment.

It reveals a general state of mind.

They distort the reality

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