TOTH to Dust My Broom
Riot coverage ‘excessive’, says French TV boss
One of France’s leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians.
Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service TCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been “excessive” and could even be fanning the flames of the violence.
Mr Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars.
“Politics in France is heading to the right and I don’t want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television,” Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today.
I wonder how he can say that since he didn’t cover it? Does he really mean he would rather encourage support for the opposition Islamofascisti? Either way, it is simply the French version of American media bias.
Jean-Claude, listen up, the question in a Western democracy is whether or not the cars are burning, not your political sympathies. French bloggers were all over it anyway, so the prevarication simply makes you look as stupid as you are Marxist – if, by now, we can’t recognize that as a tautology.
The reasons French MSM are so open about their biases is left to reader speculation.
However, I do wonder how Jean-Claude Dassier feels about Bastille Day, Al-Jazeera broadcast head removal flicks, and coverage of former UN ambassador from France Merimee’s arrest in the oil-for-food scandal.
Clarity on these few random examples would give me a better read on what he means by “excessive.”
Update, 5:33PM, 11-Nov. “oxymoron” should, of course, have been “tautology” – must have been tired