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| Europe |
| French Catholic Newspaper fires reporter for book on Iraq |
| 2003-12-29 |
| PARIS Alain Hertoghe believes that in covering the Iraq conflict, French newspapers recreated "the war they would have liked to have seen." That meant concentration on the Vietnams and Stalingrads that didn’t take place, he said, and so many more accounts of U.S. difficulties rather than advances that it was "impossible to understand how the Americans won." In the book, Hertoghe explains what he considers the press’s unanimity not as the result of some kind of explicit understanding but coming from a combination of factors. He regards the single most cohesive element as French anti-Americanism. Nice to see him admit it The two other central motors, in Hertoghe’s view, were France’s nostalgia for its lost status as a great power and what he described as "the Arabophilia that reigns among France’s deciders and in particular among the journalists specializing in this part of the world." So they really are afraid! As an example, he compares headlines involving Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain during the period. He said there were 29 clearly negative ones concerning Saddam, and 135 for Bush and Blair. The coalition leaders were routinely described, he says, as violent, imperialist, fundamentalist and unreasonable. Four-to-one? That’s balanced! "Le Monde went the furthest," he added. "I wrote that Le Monde became ’Saddam’s Gazette.’ It gave a picture from Baghdad of Saddam’s units perfectly controlling the situation. The difference between Le Monde and Le Figaro was that Le Figaro insisted that American tanks would operate easily on Baghdad’s wide streets. Then when the Americans made their move, we read how they were massacring the Iraqis. The explanation for the collapse was that Saddam’s fedayeen had so much compassion for the population that they stopped fighting." I don’t get the French Newspapers (or the English versions) but I suspected that they and others in Europe were in FULL ATTACK mode towards the U.S. Now that someone calls them on their lies he gets fired. This guy should go work for Fox News or the Washington Post. |
| Posted by:Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) |
| #4 That's in the headline here... |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-12-29 2:00:20 PM |
| #3 Update: The Instapundit notes that Hertoghe was rewarded by being fired. |
| Posted by: G 2003-12-29 1:23:41 PM |
| #2 FULL ATTACK mode indeed! "War!", "Kamikazes alert!", "Calls to holy war", "The failures of a blitzkrieg", "The murderous urban warfare", "War's desolation", "Iraqi resistance", "Marines stall", "Beware, boobytrapped war", "Iraq, Somalia, same script?" "Good morning iraq!", "A new Viet nam?", "The traps of an insane war", "War or dhijad?", "How saddam prepare himself for the battle", "Saddam up to the challenge", "The shiite south doesn't weaken", "How saddam endures", "Why the war goes on", "The hawks in the storm", "Americans and britons caught in a long and bloody conflict", "Saddam's stand", "Britons worry about Us methods", "Saddam's gauntlet", "Bagdad's battles", "The castastroph", "The sinking", "The quagmire", "The tragedy", "How Bush's war sets the whole world on fire", "The Bush sect attacks", "Bush's holy war", "Georges Bush's fault", "The fall" (Titles from the mainstream french press, in a chronological order 03/20/03 - 04/10/03, casually compiled by André Glucksmann for his book); NOT the more expressive! The one that stick to my mind is a tabloid's frontpage, with a tired-looking Us soldier pic (always the choice for illustrating quagmire), and a splashing "Bush's insane crusade!". |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-12-29 1:15:56 PM |
| #1 Glad too see that someone over there still has some cojones. |
| Posted by: Charles 2003-12-29 12:27:09 PM |