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Musings on Journalism in the Online Age

Tag: Le Monde

October 11, 2015

A Tribute to Éric Rouleau (1926–2015)

Éric Rouleau had a deep relationship with Egypt and the Middle East—he was Le Monde’s correspondent in the region for 30 years, and later served as France’s ambassador to Tunisia and to Turkey. He was born in Cairo, began his journalism career on the Egyptian Gazette, and maintained a lifelong attachment to his native country.

A tribute to Éric will be held in Cairo on October 13 on the occasion of the Arabic translation of Éric’s final work, Dans les coulisses du Proche-Orient: Mémoires d’un journaliste diplomate (1952-2012). The event is hosted by American University in Cairo’s Middle East Studies Center, the Institut Francais d’Egypte, and the Al-Tanany Publishing House.

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One of the speakers is longtime Le Monde Diplomatique Editor-in-Chief Alain Gresh, who wrote a poignant appreciation of Éric’s life and career in Orient XXI last March. A translation appears in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. Here’s a brief excerpt:

In 1985, Rouleau transitioned to a diplomatic career at the request of President Mitterand. He was appointed ambassador, first to Tunis—then headquarters of the Arab League, and the city where the Palestinian Liberation Organization sought refuge after its expulsion from Beirut in 1982—and later to Ankara. After this time, only diplomats would benefit from his culture, analyses, and countless connections. Ironically, Rouleau himself noticed that the number of his readers dropped from hundreds to two, and even sometimes one—the president of the Republic.

During the first meeting of French ambassadors held in Paris after his appointment, each of the diplomats introduced themselves and their country of assignment—for example the Ivory Coast, Jordan, Argentina, etc. When it was his turn, he stood up and said: “Éric Rouleau, Le Monde.” There was silence, then the audience broke into laughter. Freud believed that slips of the tongue expressed unconscious desires. Did Rouleau consider himself the ambassador of the daily newspaper? Or did he see himself as ambassador to the world, monde in French, as he crossed from north to south? Or, might he have simply meant that he was our ambassador to a planet whose glitches he would help us solve?

Also, read “Cairo: A Memoir,” by Éric Rouleau in the Summer 2012 edition of the Cairo Review.

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“A Tribute to Éric Rouleau (1926–2015)” will be held in Oriental Hall, AUC Tahrir Campus, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday October 13.

—Scott MacLeod

 

October 1, 2015

French Press: Mon Dieu!

France’s crise de la presse has no end in sight. Like almost everywhere, France’s print newspapers are grappling with declining sales, slumping ad revenues, and the challenges posed by digital media—how to join the digital revolution, or be crushed by it.

WWD has an interview with Francis Morel, CEO of France’s Les Echo Group, that gives a glimpse into the boardroom forces driving change in the French media. Among those forces: the takeover of French newspapers by conglomerates with no experience in journalism or professional stake in a free press; a trend toward boutique products like weekend magazines to attract elite readers and advertisers who want to reach them; and a determination to exploit marquee newspaper brands to develop consulting units and other sidelines.

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Morel reports that such services could soon represent almost half of the business at Les Echos, which began publishing as France’s first daily financial newspaper in 1908:

There are always activities to develop to complement the main business of media. We launched Les Echos Solutions in June with services ranging from crowdfunding to market studies and incubators for start-up companies. We are developing a publishing arm for companies with a separate staff. Services will represent one-third of the group sales in 2016. Down the road, they could be up to 45 percent of Les Echos’ business. We define ourselves as “the first media outlet for information and services,” which makes us stand out. On the services front, I think we are at the forefront.

Les Echos is just another case of how French journalists find themselves entwined with conglomerates. The paper was closely held by the Schreiber family and then the Beytout family for eight decades before being sold to Britain’s Pearson PLC, itself a publishing and education company. In 2007, Pearson sold it to LVMH, the French luxury goods conglomerate focused on brands like Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Moët & Chandon. Under Morel, Les Echos Group is now about to take ownership of two more French dailies, Le Parisien and its national counterpart, Aujourd’hui en France. That will put Les Echos Group in the top rank of French mainstream press, along with Le Monde and Le Figaro.

The marriage of journalists and conglomerates has not been a happy one. Shortly after the LVMH acquisition of Les Echos, editor Erik Israelewicz resigned over alleged editorial interference, and his staff went on strike to insist on editorial independence. Similar tensions arose in 2010 when a trio of French tycoons took control of Le Monde: Matthieu Pigasse, Pierre Bergé, and Xavier Niel. Since then, the paper has gone through five chief editors. (The trio, meanwhile, has acquired Le Nouvel Observateur, now simply L’Obs, a leading French newsweekly). Le Figaro, another French newspaper of record, is owned by the Dassault Group, known for its aerospace business in Mirage fighter bombers and other military aircraft.

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Critics accuse the French (and their labor unions) of being resistant to change. Where independent journalism is at stake, that may not be a bad thing at all. Last year journalists at Libération went on strike against a plan by its shareholders led by chairman Édouard de Rothschild (38.6 percent share) to “save” the paper—besides the usual staff cutbacks, the plan would turn the newspaper’s headquarters into a cultural center and reinvent the paper itself as a social network. Journalists at Libération, which was founded by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre after the 1968 student and worker upheavals in France, explained their walkout with the front-page headline:

WE ARE A NEWSPAPER not a restaurant, not social media, not a TV studio, not a bar, not a startup incubator…

—Scott MacLeod

September 11, 2015

The Alan Kurdi Debate

The photograph of a lifeless 3-year-old Syrian boy face down on a Turkish beach shocked us to the core. It appeared on front pages, news websites, Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and television broadcasts around the world, bringing unprecedented attention to the Syrian refugee tragedy.

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The boy, Alan Kurdi (evidently wrongly identified in news media accounts as Aylan Kurdi initially), was among the steady flow of desperate Syrians seeking refuge in Europe aboard small and overcrowded vessels crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Strong waves apparently forced the boat carrying Alan to capsize, leading to the deaths of 12 people including the boy’s mother and 5-year-old brother.

The image of Alan, taken on September 2, sparked a debate about whether publishing the photograph was journalism or voyeurism. Many media organizations showed reluctance to run it, instead opting for a frame showing his partially obscured body being carried away by a Turkish police officer. Max Fisher writes in Vox: “There is a line between compassion and voyeurism. And as that photo was shared and retweeted over and over again, converted into listicles and social-friendly packages, it felt more and more like the latter.” Many shared the feeling that the image was another violation, and that withholding the image showed respect for human dignity.

Such concerns are valid, which is why the decision to publish or not to publish was debated so thoroughly in many newsrooms. But in this instance the photo achieved the higher journalistic purpose of informing the world about news that we need to know about. It did so in a way that humanized a tragedy that has otherwise become numbingly familiar with almost daily accounts of refugees fleeing new conflict zones or drowning in the sea.

Aiden White, writing in openDemocracy, where he includes some good links to the discussion, argues that the disturbing image helped media and social networks “shape the refugee crisis into a more sensitive, humanitarian and people-focused story.” Indeed, the image prompted debates from Britain to Australia on whether leading developed nations were doing enough to alleviate the humanitarian crisis including taking in higher numbers of refugees. British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande were reported to have been personally moved by the image. On September 10, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would admit 10,000 refugees over the next year, compared to 2,000 this year. Senator John McCain presented a blow-up of the photo on the floor of the United States Senate to urge stronger American leadership in the Syrian crisis.

Aiden White noted how the Alan Kurdi photo even seemed to change some hard-line attitudes inside newsrooms :

Some media were forced to reverse their previously hostile coverage of refugees. The Sun, Britain’s leading tabloid newspaper, quietly erased its promotion of dehumanising rhetoric from columnist Katie Hopkins who in April referred to Mediterranean refugee victims as “cockroaches” and said: “Show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.”

In Germany, Bild, the country’s best-selling newspaper, performed a dramatic act in response to a public uproar over its decision to use the image: on September 8, it published its print and online editions with no photos at all. In France, Le Monde director Jérôme Fenoglio defended his paper’s decision in a front-page editorial: “No voyeurism, no sensationalism here. But the will to capture a part of the reality of the moment. Maybe it will take this photo for Europe to open its eyes.” Olivier Laurent has a good discussion of the newsroom decision-making on TIME magazine’s Lightbox blog.

The photo of Alan was taken by Nilüfer Demir of the Turkish Dogan News Agency, who explained her actions in an interview here.

AFP’s Bülent Kiliç, the Turkish photographer who won the World Press Photo 2015 contest for the best spot news photograph (covering the Istanbul protests in 2014), has done superb work documenting the tragedy of the Syrian refugees this year. Check out a gallery of his photos here.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported in August that more than 4 million Syrians had registered as refugees with the agency. The UNHCR reports that more than 300,000 refugees from Syria as well as other conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in Europe via Mediterranean crossings so far in 2015. This year as of August some 2,500 refugees and migrants are estimated to have died in the process; the figure was 3,500 for all of 2014.

—Scott MacLeod