French media & immigration issues & islamism

Bévues de presse is an essay on the lack of professionalism in – and not “of” - French media (its title translates roughly into "Press blunders"). The text below provides some “misjournalism” examples translated from the book, as well as some information on its author, Jean-Pierre Tailleur.(*)

Many French newspapers have been shy on immigration questions

when related to Islam or islamism

The integration of immigrants is one of the top challenges facing the French society these days. It is important, therefore, to assess how the press, in this country at the centre of population’s flows, has been informing on immigration-related issues in recent times. Since the topic is vast, I will focus principally on its most controversial aspect: the way mainstream media have been reporting the lack of integration of many North African descendants living in France. This community makes up the majority of our immigrants and of our Muslims. Two aspects need to be looked at: discrimination and racism towards this group and a high rate of delinquency among its young males.

I believe that French journalists often misrepresent Arab Muslims living in France, either too negatively or too positively. They do so for a number of reasons: because of a desire to sensationalise or on account of political correctness; because they do not make a sufficient effort to get to know and understand these immigrants; and because members of our ethnic minorities do not have a sufficient presence in mainstream editorial offices.

I am also an immigrant, in some ways. I was born in Buenos Aires of an Argentine mother who always speaks Spanish with me, and my father is French. This meant having two passports with two different names: Juan Pedro and Jean-Pierre. When I was four years old, my parents decided to settle in France. I later spent five years in New York, but never tried to settle permanently in the United States. Moreover, my only brother lives in England and is married to an Australian who travels on a German passport.

There is thus a link between my family circumstances and the issue of immigration. Being a Caucasian, I don’t remember suffering any serious discrimination at school, but the dual nationality did have an impact on my interest in journalism. One of my first articles published, while at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism in New York, was about the Dominican Republic community living in the Big Apple. I have also written about the Arabs in Argentina, who mostly migrated in the first decades of the twentieth century (including former President Carlos Menem’s parents, who were Syrian Muslims). Both articles were published in an academic monthly magazine called “Men and migrations” (Hommes et migrations), which is arguably the main French reference source on foreign population issues.

My views on media coverage of immigrants are undoubtedly influenced by a task undertaken after graduating from Columbia University “J school” in 1993: working on Bévues de presse, a documented, fact-based essay on the lack of professionalism “in” - and not “of” - the French press, in print since 2002. The main problem is that a constructive criticism of respected journalists and newspapers had not been published so far in France. Our intellectuals or scholars, so often highly media-conscious, are insensitive to the poor quality of the information disseminated in French provinces, for instance. The study of misreporting which I have undertaken shows up a disturbing lack of concern at the centre of our democracy. The best illustration of this, perhaps, is the failure—or the refusal—of many respected reporters and newspapers to assess the poor degree of integration among many North African immigrants and their families. As a consequence, it has opened the way for xenophobe extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen to promote drastic, unrealistic and unacceptable measures against foreigners living between the Alps and the Channel. He even managed to knock his socialist competitor Lionel Jospin out of the presidential race, on 21 April 2002. In France, this date has somehow turned to be the national equivalent of the September 11 earthquake.

[...] The attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon opened the way for some remarkable reports on what happens within migrant communities. The case of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan arrested in the United States for being involved with terrorists, was well explained to French viewers and readers. First of all, while a teenager in Narbonne, a town between Montpellier and the Spanish boarder, he was a victim of certain kinds of discrimination. It was reported that, during career interviews at school, some teachers led him to believe that, since he was an Arab, his professional ambition would be fulfilled by simply becoming a clerk. Experiences such as this created resentment, which explains in part why he started to turn towards fundamentalism. He was then swallowed up by groups that behave like sects and who send young French Muslims to London and to camps in Afghanistan.

The Zacarias Moussaoui story also provided unfortunate examples of passive journalism. After September 11, for instance, Midi libre, the dominant daily paper in the Languedoc region where he grew up, went overboard in its coverage. It even sent a special correspondent to New York, which did not add anything to what was received through the press agencies. Nevertheless, Midi libre failed to inform its readers as to what drives young Arabs from southern France, around its hometown Montpellier, to support or participate in Osama bin Laden’s operations. No deep reporting either on the discrimination they suffer— mostly rhetoric journalism. This newspaper - which is owned by Le Monde - contented itself with publishing some brief portraits of Zacarias Moussaoui, no more detailed than those published in the international press. Like other regional newspapers, generally of poor quality in centralised France, their mission to explain the local dimensions of a world catastrophe—the fundamentalism of some French Muslims—was not carried out.

Midi libre and its peers have not improved since then, as the question of the Islamic veil, less and less tolerated in public schools after September 11, became a major issue again. On a Saturday in January 2004, for instance, when several fundamentalist groups marched in several cities for Muslim teenage girls' right to wear it, Le Monde's affiliate did not publish anything on the local aspects of the debate. Its readers were just provided some articles sent from Paris by Agence France Presse (AFP), and had to watch a program on major television network France 2 to get a clue on Islamic fundamentalism in Montpellier. In the French provinces, such a hot issue is more likely to be covered by the local correspondents of national media, like newspaper Libération.

Even those newspapers which are keen to denounce the violent behaviour of young immigrants are also guilty of misinforming. Valeurs actuelles, another weekly, is considered very conservative and reflected this in a media survey on demographics. The article in question was devoted to the fall in the birth rate and entitled «Immigration is not the solution». To reach this conclusion, the journalist from Valeurs actuelles apparently interviewed only one person, a demographer who was presented as right-wing. The rest of the information came from general data, public declarations by politicians, or comments by experts taken from other newspapers. Here again, the immigrant was just a statistic or a fantasy. First-hand testimonies were virtually non-existent. As with the use of opinion polls in the French press, mentioned earlier, the journalist in this case delegated to third parties his responsibility to come up with accurate factual information.

[...] Our ethnic minorities do not have a sufficient presence at mainstream editorial desks. Despite the demographic weight of non-white residents in France, they have little visibility. The same applies to our parliaments and governments. Nominated in 2002, Tokia Saïfi and Hamlaoui Mekachera have been the first Algerian descent cabinet members. They are respectively secretaries of State for Sustainable Development and for Veterans Affairs, at the start of Jacques Chirac’s second presidency. In the media, the very congenial Algerian-born Rachid Arhab is a rare example of a coloured journalist on one of our main networks. Farid Aïchoune, who reports for Le Nouvel observateur, is another exception in mainstream newsrooms. However, this weekly paper is still far from being a reliable information tool on questions afflicting the Arab community more than any other. In its issue commemorating September 11 two years after, for instance, in September 2003, Le Nouvel observateur ignored the question of fundamentalism in France.

Overall, then, for the variety of reasons outlined above, French journalists often misrepresent North African Muslims living in France, either too negatively or too positively. There is no need to demonstrate that excessively bad representation is wrong, and still exists. A few months after September 11, a luggage handler at Paris’ Roissy airport, Abderazak Besseghir, was falsely accused by the police of being an Islamist and planning terrorist attacks. Though he was the victim of a deception by his in-laws, the French citizen of Algerian origin became a too easy prey for some journalists. On the other hand, a too angelic depiction of Islamic groups in his community is equally wrong, and a dereliction of journalistic duty. More importantly, it amounts to a glossing-over and censorship of information which it is important in the public interest to disseminate. It also fails to report facts which are seen as potentially damaging to ethnic minorities.

George Orwell, in a preface intended for the first edition of Animal Farm, condemned the kind of orthodoxies that lead to the censoring of disagreeable facts and opinions. He concluded: «If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.»

(*) This text is based on a speech given during the Cleraun Media Conference (Dublin, February 2002). More in the article below, published in Ireland.

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The media has a vital role to play in ensuring fairness in asylum debate

[extracted from The Irish Examiner -- 26/02/02]  Full version

[...] As we approach a general election, debate is intensifying about Ireland's unique citizenship rules - we are the only country in Europe that awards citizenship by birth and the State generally grants the parents of these citizens residency. [...]

The media's role in refereeing this debate will be crucial. Last weekend, French academic Jean-Pierre Tailleur addressed the Cleraun Media Conference on the subject of Coverage of Conflict. His speech had much to say to an Ireland that is still at the early stages of immigration and the task of integrating thousands of European and non-European people into our society. Tailleur told the conference how respected French reporters and newspapers failed to assess the "poor degree of integration among many North African immigrants and their families" with negative consequences for public attitudes to race issues.

Last October, a soccer tie between France and Algeria was disrupted when French descendants of North African immigrants, known in France as the beurs, booed the French National Anthem. French Government Ministers, including Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, feigned ignorance of what was happening, even while many Algerian supporters were chanting the name of Osama Bin Laden. The match was discontinued with 15 minutes remaining after 200 of the beurs staged a pitch invasion. The incident was a far cry from the jubilant scenes on the Champs Elysees in July 1998 when the French soccer team, lead by second generation Algerian Zinedine Zidane, claimed the World Cup for the first time.

On that night, France's young Arabs were the noisiest in their celebrations. And, because the French soccer team was mostly composed of players linked to foreign colonies, the event was invested with huge significance. The team, their victory and the celebrations were seen as symbolic of a France composed of many nationalities, successfully integrated with each other.

But the Champs Elysees celebrations fed complacency about the problem. According to Tailleur there have been "two decades of rampant misinformation on the true state of integration of North African immigrants". The media fell into one of two opposing traps - sensationalism or political correctness. On the sensationalist side, you had newspapers like Paris-Match, purporting to do a 24-page investigation of immigration, but in fact distorting testimonies and photographs in an effort to portray suburbs populated by immigrants as near war-zones. But more politically correct media also contributed to the problem by avoiding tough coverage of the problems faced by the beurs, including fundamentalist Islamic practices and community violence.

French media over-emphasised the success of a small number of North African descendants, like actress Isabelle Adjani or soccer star Zidane, but downplayed problematic behaviour among immigrant males. Journalists focused on discrimination against immigrants isolated in low-rent buildings and ghettoes, but failed to document signs of sectarianism and racism among the immigrant communities themselves.

Since the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in autumn 2000, scores of attacks have taken place on the French-Jewish community, but the mainstream newspapers waited nearly a year before reporting it properly. Tailleur believes this "opened the way for some political parties to promote drastic, unrealistic and unacceptable measures against foreigners living in France".

In the wake of the Noel O'Flynn affair, the message should not be lost on us in Ireland. We need a media that is tough on racism but open-minded in its analysis of immigration. It's not enough for Irish journalists to take a high moral tone when politicians utter vote-catching sentiments or to call for deselection of such candidates. This approach only risks driving the muttering about immigration underground. Instead, the media must invest heavily in its coverage of immigration issues. At the moment, a lot of coverage of asylum seekers tends to centre on conflict and problems - thus reinforcing in the public mind the notion that immigrants are trouble. Instead, the media needs to lead the debate on how to manage the influx of asylum-seekers and migrant workers, how to integrate them successfully.

[...] The Jesuit Refugee Service is one organisation which believes that hard-line immigration policies will not stem the tide of people desperate to make it into developed countries. Instead, western governments must attack the root causes of migration - poverty, regional conflicts and human rights abuses - and increase overseas development aid (ODA) contributions.

They urge strong political leadership and a recognition that the integration of refugees is as important as the work of admitting them. Voices such as these, which offer practical and not just quick-fix solutions to immigration problems, must be heard in the coming months. With our general election fast approaching, our media and political leaders must ensure that it is not fought on the backs of the poorest and most persecuted people in the world.                                                                                                        Rónán Mullen