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| Europe | |
| French Newspapers for Kids Bring Home Horrors of War | |
| 2003-04-11 | |
| Daily during the war, 11-year-old Adrien has trundled to the mail box, picked out his copy of France's popular newspaper for youngsters and read about the horrors of the conflict in Iraq. This week, he's found the news hard to stomach. Most disturbing, he says, was a photo Tuesday of a terrified Iraqi girl fleeing the fighting on her father's shoulders, with smoking tanks in the distance. "She looks so sad, I think she's crying," he said. "It's awful, I am against this war." "Little Daily," aimed at children aged 7-10, is at the center of a debate in France about whether to expose or shield children from images of the fighting. When the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, "Little Daily" editor Francois Dufour dropped the usual stories about animals or nature. Instead, he set out to explain in simple language everything from weapons of mass destruction to the brutality of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. "We have to show reality, war is terrible," he said in an interview this week. Children "will feel less in a bubble, it's an eye-opener on the world and the world is not a calm place." From his newsroom at the back of a courtyard in central Paris, Dufour publishes four daily newspapers exclusively for youngsters from kindergarten to high school. Dufour says the paper is delivered daily to 200,000 homes but that readership through schools is closer to 2 million. His newspapers have run photos of American prisoners of war, blood on a hospital floor, injured civilians or plumes of smoke rising above Baghdad. "In Iraq, people are dying and suffering," read a headline this week, with a picture showing an Iraqi man in tears surrounded by the coffins of his dead relatives. Dufour insists that his papers offer a balanced view of the war, free of editorial influence. But a cartoon in Wednesday's edition of "L'Actu" (The News), for kids aged 14 and above, had a distinct anti- American bent. It showed an American soldier firing four bullets through the stomach of an Iraqi civilian under the caption: "I am feeding Iraqis."
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| Posted by:Bruce |
| #12 About 25 years ago, I went to Bastogne and to St. Lo to visit a couple places my Dad had been. (He was wounded at St. Lo.) I found the people in both areas very pleasant. I wonder how much things have changed in a quarter century... |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-04-11 15:29:39 |
| #11 Joe, There are still people in Normandy, Brittany, and Alsace that like and respect Americans. The rest of France would make a nice sewer. The people in Paris all believe they are the direct descendents of the Bourbons, and should continue to be treated as their ancestors were treated 300 years ago. That goes triple for anyone actually from the former French colonies. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-04-11 14:45:43 |
| #10 And did I mention that I hate the goddamn Frogs? Just wanted to make sure I got that in. |
| Posted by: Joe 2003-04-11 12:05:27 |
| #9 Are you kidding? You're never going to see balance in any of the French media. I lived there for a year and I absolutely couldn't believe the unreasoning anti-Americanism that pervaded everything. This goes much farther than opposing the war in Iraq, as has been noted elsewhere. It amounts to a national inferiority complex. I hope to God they get shut completely out of the reconstruction in Iraq. And I wish American tourists would stop visiting France as well. Why go spend your money in a place populated by people who are inflated with totally unwarranted self-importance and who treat Americans with hostility and derision? France is a beautiful country. It's just too bad the French live there. |
| Posted by: Joe 2003-04-11 12:02:41 |
| #8 I think the United States should demand equal time. Include the photos of US prisoners of war with "suspicious" gunshot wounds in the center of their forehead. Include a short article on how Jessica Lynch was provided "medical care" by the Iraqi military. Include the astounding joy of the people of Baghdad celebrating the destruction of Saddam's statue. Anything less would be tatamount to admitting that the entire "coverage" was a petulent propaganda display for no other purpose but to feed anti-American sentiment. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-04-11 09:27:28 |
| #7 Most disturbing, he says, was a photo Tuesday of a terrified Iraqi girl fleeing the fighting on her father's shoulders, with smoking tanks in the distance. "She looks so sad, I think she's crying," he said. "It's awful, I am against this war." Ooooh, the image of a scared kid on someone's shoulders with burning tanks behind them is SOOOOOOO scary. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-04-11 09:16:14 |
| #6 Gotcha - nice visual too...thanks |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-04-11 09:10:40 |
| #5 Hi Frank! White-ant: to destructively and connivingly infiltrate like a termite through the wood of your house. |
| Posted by: anon1 2003-04-11 09:08:35 |
| #4 anon1: white-ant? Aussie slang? I'm curious - agree with all above however. Here in the U.S. the enviros go for the schools - save the whales (collect the whole set) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-04-11 07:50:23 |
| #3 Yeah. "Think of the children" really means let's expose them to all sorts of horrors and warp their psyche permanently so that we can influence them their entire lives. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-04-11 07:37:40 |
| #2 Bulldog, you do have a way with words. You are right, of course, they do it in Australia, too. The socialists have not just infiltrated the universities, in the last few years they've made great efforts to white-ant the schools. They have been very busy organising their youth wing 'resistance' and encourage young activists to spread their ideology on the schoolground, organising the kids to go on protests etc. When they're young, they're impressionable. They openly state not to bother trying to convert those over 30 because they can't be brainwashed as easily. |
| Posted by: anon1 2003-04-11 06:18:27 |
| #1 These French cartoonists sure are gifted. It's a shame how the left always targets kids, like perverts handing out sweets at the edge of a school playground. It takes decades for the indoctrination to rub off. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-04-11 05:56:41 |