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| Europe |
| French TV boss admits censoring riot coverage |
| 2005-11-11 |
| al-Grauniad One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians. Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service LCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been "excessive" and could even be fanning the flames of the violence. Mr Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars. "Politics in France is heading to the right and I don't want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today. "Having satellites trained on towns across France 24 hours a day showing the violence would have been wrong and totally disproportionate ... Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you're broadcasting," he said. Mr Dassier denied he was guilty of "complicity" with the French authorities, which this week invoked an extraordinary state-of-emergency law passed during the country's war with Algeria 50 years ago. But he admitted his decision was partly motivated by a desire to avoid encouraging the resurgence of extreme rightwing views in France. French broadcasters have faced criticism for their lack of coverage of the country's worst civil unrest in decades. Public television station France 3 has stopped broadcasting the numbers of torched cars while other TV stations are considering following suit. "Do we send teams of journalists because cars are burning, or are the cars burning because we sent teams of journalists?" asked Patrick Lecocq, editor-in-chief of France 2. Rival news organisations today questioned the French broadcasters' decision to temper coverage of the riots. John Ryley, the executive editor of Sky News, said his channel would have handled a similar story in Britain very differently. "We would have been all over it like a cheap suit. We would have monstered the story, and I didn't get the impression that happened in France," he said. |
| Posted by:Angerert Slaitch5680 |
| #4 Truthful riot coverage is double-plus ungood if it may possibly reflect poorly on the liberal politicians whose policies brought the rioting on in the first instance. |
| Posted by: Scott R 2005-11-11 18:39 |
| #3 Ministry of Truth |
| Posted by: James 2005-11-11 14:30 |
| #2 Their agenda-laden activity furthers the society's inability to grasp just how racist they are. They censored coverage of Synagogue attacks and attacks on Jews They spin messages about the riots and censor coverage. And they complain about us. sheesh. |
| Posted by: PlanetDan 2005-11-11 13:22 |
| #1 As I remember, the international media was pissed you couldn't eat off of the sidewalks in New Orleans 2 days after the floods. Looks like the wheel turned faster then it usually does on them. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-11-11 12:22 |