EDITO – May 3 is World Press Freedom Day (1). So decided the General Assembly of the United Nations this month of December 1993. But, on this anniversary day, the trend is more than ever that of a sad observation. On May 3, we may officially celebrate its freedom the press is, in fact, imprisoned. It is 365 days a year, 366 leap years, May 3 included.
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In France, the press and the media are, in particular, under the influence of seven billionaires. These same gentlemen have also been receiving subsidies for a long time, no less than several billion in recent years. Even if this gigantic windfall is only a tip for them, what do they do in return? They publish, as so-called verified truths, information that goes in the sole direction of the official version: that which is communicated to them by the power in place. Wouldn’t the circle be complete if by chance the people at the head of this power were none other than those whom these seven billionaires are working to get elected with a lot of publications in their media?
And for good reason ! In return, once in place, these people pass laws that are mainly in the direction of the private interests of the wealthiest.
Yes. The press under orders took the tangent. The tangent to the obtuse angle (see on this subject “On the importance of the angle”). The angle chosen to process information, supposed to be the space of freedom of the journalist, is from now on modeled according to the only desired perception. During this Covid-19 crisis, we have seen real lies and false truths mixed together under the pretext of the permanent state of health emergency.
The fourth estate, which the press once represented, has therefore been muzzled not only through the concentration of information in the hands of a few men belonging to big business, but also through its own regulatory and regulatory bodies, trade unionism in particular. head.
In addition, the proliferation of information monitoring and verification bodies, in response to the advent of social networks, helps to control and lock down the single message. The culmination of this permanent state of emergency for two years: the release of Céline Pigalle, director of BFMTV. I quote: “We mustn’t go too far against the official word, since that would weaken a social consensus! »
Devil ! What is the point of having journalists if they conform to the doxa?
Many of them do it for fear of not being liked or for fear of losing their place. So much so that there is no need to be told what to do: they s’autocensurent (2).
By doing so, aren’t they violating the number one duty of the Munich Charter? Of ” no matter what, i’ll tell the truth “, we went to: ” I have to be careful, I want to keep my place. However, it must be admitted that we are all more or less forced to make compromises because we all have to accommodate the priorities that life imposes on us: the responsibilities that our personal, social, family or even medical.
And it is also true that the job of journalist is two-tiered. On the one hand, there are the stars of the system, and on the other the precarious status, that of the intermittent of the media spectacle whose function is well known: to contribute to make people believe rather than to inform.
However, daughter of freedom of expression, freedom of the press requires courage. Courage requires honestly informing the reader.
As such, it is essential to provide those who risk it with the assistance required to be able to do so without inevitably having to lose their feathers.
We salute in passing the fair information offered by a few rebels. I am thinking, among others, of André Bercoff (“Bercoff in all its states”), to Ivan Rioufol (“The dots on the I’s”), to Alexis poulain (“The Modern World”), and also of course to all the citizen journalists who, within our editorial staff or elsewhere, fulfill the mission to inform honestlypassing it above the trolls paid by the media outlets.
Bravo and thank you to all those who are in this right line, who fight “whatever it takes” for freedom of expression.
(1) To raise awareness of the importance of press freedom and remind governments of their obligation to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . This marks the anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration, a declaration of press freedom principles that was put in place by African print journalists in 1991. And on this occasion, on May 3, the World Press Freedom Prize the press is also handed over.
(2) Speech by Mike Pence