How the yellow vests sparked media hatred

INTERVIEW

"From insults to violent acts, there is only one step," Ana Navarro-Cardenas, a moderate and anti-Trump Republican consultant once said.

Quoted by François Jost in his new book,

 (CNRS Éditions) it protested against Donald Trump's continual insults towards the media, fearing that the American president would end up "having someone killed in the media".

Guest on Friday in the program Culture Media of Europe 1, François Jost, author of “Media: out of hatred?”, Abounds.

 "If I am writing this book, it is because I am convinced that this risk exists", affirms the semiologist and professor emeritus at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, who evokes the crisis of "yellow vests" during which several journalists were assaulted.

Without forgetting the agency of France Bleu Isère, set on fire, against a backdrop of repeated criticism of these "shit" (contraction of "shit" and "media"), "in the pay of power".

In history, and in all places, the media have on several occasions lost the confidence of their public, recounts in the preamble François Jost, listing the case of the mass grave of Timisaora, in Romania (1989), the Gulf war (1990). ), or the Hyper Cacher attack (2015), when journalists revealed on the air that people were hiding in the cold room of the supermarket.

In 2018, the start of the "yellow vests" crisis was "a trigger", explains François Jost.

"I wrote this book for that, wondering why this hatred. And trying to see the implicit philosophy of 'yellow vests' vis-à-vis the media," he continues.

In other words, "what the 'yellow vests' think a good media would be".

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"We asked the media to be very subjectivity"

To this question, the first answer given by François Jost is "a medium that tells the truth", in sequence shots, without editing, as Rémy Buisine did in particular or RT, the media financed by the Russian state.

However, "it's a bit naive", believes the semiologist.

"Even a football match is mounted live, otherwise you would get bored."

Moreover, beyond the fact that this is technically impossible, the ideal media of "yellow vests" would help "to cancel the adversarial" by not going on the side of the police.

To sum up, "what we asked of the media was a very great subjectivity".

However, François Jost recalls, "the contradictory is the raison d'être of democracy. We must accept that there are people with whom we do not agree in the media, and that it is not as far as we have to hate these media ".

Besides the objectivity argument, journalists have also been repeatedly criticized for not showing "real people".

A correct and founded criticism, judges the semiologist.

"There is a whole category of people who no longer appeared on television," he analyzes, relying on reports from the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA).

"In the news, there are 78% of senior executives, while they are 25% in France," he says, adding that this has helped to take away a lot of dignity from those who were not part of this Socio-Professional Category.

"One of the positive points of the Covid crisis is that people like nurses, garbage collectors, stretcher bearers suddenly reappeared."

Today, release of my last book: Media: getting out of hate?

(@CNRSEd) pic.twitter.com/L085LVpC2Z

- François Jost (@francoisjost) September 3, 2020

Media "subservient to power"

For the professor, there is another reason for this detestation of the media: "the impression that journalists form a caste, a microcosm cut off from the world".

According to the researcher, this impression emerges from an absolute necessity: "the media must accept it, we must admit that we can participate and listen to what people want".

During the crisis of the "yellow vests", which qualified the 24-hour news channels as "TV Macron", the idea that the media were "subservient to power" was also revived, as well as that according to which media were run by big money powers.

On this last point, "it's true", François Jost reminds us, "but it's not new either".

While criticism of the media is increasingly present and violent, the author of

(CNRS Éditions) remembers a time when "the opposition never appeared on television", and when the government counted among its members, a Minister of Information. "Researchers have shown that during de Gaulle, fictions were written in the ministries to say the things that we wanted to convey", he adds. "So it's better today".