Abstract
As in so many countries, the French media has had to reposition itself in response to the explosion of online news. But, argues Rue 89’s
As with many western countries, France is facing up to the disruptive nature of the internet and digital innovation. And as with all disruptions, it has positive and negative effects. As a country in the midst of an economic, political and identity crisis, France is dealing with these issues with uncertainty and, often, fear.
First, a disclaimer: the author of this article is a long-time French journalist who, in 2007, jumped out of ‘traditional’ media, ie the daily newspaper Libération, to launch the first 100 per cent digital news platform in France, www.Rue89.com, therefore embracing this ‘disruption’ and approaching it with a positive point of view.
During the first months of 2013, France has been coming to terms with a new information reality, illustrated by rather contradictory events.
The first was the resignation of budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, who had been accused by the investigative journalism news website www.mediapart.fr of having an illegal bank account in Switzerland. For months, the socialist minister strongly denied these accusations in parliament, to the president and on television. Most commentators working in traditional media believed him rather than accept the accusations, which for the most part were disseminated online.
But the independent judiciary did its job and found out that, indeed, the minister in charge of hunting fiscal fraud was himself indulging in this widespread and costly crime, an unacceptable moral and political attitude at a time of growing austerity. He was forced to resign, plunging President François Hollande and the Socialist Party into deep turmoil and introspection.
But it was also a triumph, demonstrating that an internet-only media with a small team of professional and “dedicated journalists had the capacity to break the complacency and conformity of traditional media”, seen by many citizens as part of the ruling and controversial elite. This came as a shock, but also as a confirmation that large sections of the traditional media still had to wake up to a brand new world.
The other crucial revelation of this changing environment was the rise of a Tea Party-like movement in France, born on the fringe of the traditional right and violently opposed to the legalisation of gay marriage in France, a proposal that the Socialists introduced during François Hollande’s 2012 campaign.
The movement, a coalition of Catholic fundamentalists, extreme right-wing activists and ultra-conservative members of the traditional right, initially managed to mobilise huge crowds for peaceful demonstrations that later developed into a self-proclaimed ‘French Spring’, named after the ‘Arab Spring’ that brought down dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. It used social networks in an unprecedented way, spreading its slogans, smearing supporters of gay marriage, disrupting public appearances by cabinet ministers or intellectuals through rapid mobilisation of crowds big enough to interrupt conferences, stop trains and attract a huge amount of attention.
One Green Party senator active in the pro-marriage camp in this political battle, Jewish Turkish-born Esther Benbassa, was so shocked by the hate campaign she was subjected to on social networks, and by the fact that her car was destroyed in front of her home, that she proposed dramatic controls on internet expression as part of wider media reforms, despite the fact that the implementation of such measures would be in direct contradiction to her party’s libertarian values.
This was the most striking, but not the first, instance of a growing capacity of small and marginal political forces to use social networks to make a huge noise that far outweighed their actual political clout in the country.
In 2012, the government was forced to react to a widespread anti-Semitic campaign on Twitter in French, which used the hashtag #agoodjew. The term initially went unnoticed by the US-based Twitter employees tasked with identifying hate speech on the social networking platform’s news feeds. A French Jewish organisation, Union des etudiants juifs de France (Union of Jewish Students of France), sued Twitter, attempting to force it to close accounts of users who took part in the campaign. The French government summoned Twitter representatives, asking them to take action.
Twitter has been slow to wake up to these situations. When, in 2012, I received repeated death threats on Twitter from extreme right-wing individuals hiding behind the anonymity that the site offers, French police informed me that the company never responded to their requests. Only a few years ago, it was the US auction website eBay that was forced to react after a French court prohibited the sale of Nazi memorabilia – banned in several European countries but legal in the US – on the auction site.
ABOVE: On his blog, finance minister Jérôme Cahuzac admits that he kept funds in a Swiss bank account. The story was reported by online news sites
Credit: ABACA/Press Association Images
The transformation of the ‘new’ information environment in France undoubtedly presents new challenges, both because of the birth of a new, more aggressive, generation of web-based medias less sensitive to the cosy relationships of the French establishment, and because of the spread of uncontrolled new channels of expression outside traditional media and out of the reach of outdated legal frameworks. A predictable reaction would be to call for an increase in controls and regulations. But there is a growing acceptance in society of new technologies and new ways of expression. France, as in most western countries facing similar dilemmas, doesn’t need any more laws and restrictions than already exist on the statute books. What is needed is a better understanding of the new world, more awareness of how the digital environment impacts on issues like privacy, hate speech or defamation. This realisation has, fortunately, been evolving over the last few years – and cries for more control remain marginal.
