HERE’S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE FROM THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE on French and German state television and its efforts — often unsuccessful — to match government positions:
Whatever the ephemeral nature of being right for a moment or two in a war of continuous and instant changes – the Allies’ problems were misunderstandings “not misinformation or disinformation” said BBC’s man in Doha, Nick Gowing – the French studios seemed committed to a wish or a will to assert that most everything on the American side was going awry.
This version of the French Touch meant at least one comic collision between a field reporter’s version of events and the editorial line in Paris, and one occasion when another station explained away a rival’s images of Iraqi civilian misery.
On the main midday news on Saturday, the private broadcaster TF1, after reporting that the Americans falsely announced they held the port at Umm Qasr, Claire Chazal, a news presenter, called in a report from Jean-Claude Ferey, who was there. Uhh, he said, no doubt about it, they’re in Umm Qasr. But it’s the British not the Americans. And, Ferey explained, he had just talked to the commander, who said they’re going to avoid engaging in Basra, and let it fall when it was time.
TF1 viewers also got a closeup shot of a child with a bandaged head screaming with fear in Baghdad hospital. At virtually the same moment, France 2’s audience saw a much wider angle showing the child in a hospital room filled with newsmen, lights, and microphones and the station’s reporter – beware of reporters actually on the scene – saying that the child was screaming in terror at the commotion in what was an Iraqi propaganda set up.
The Iraqis’ report of only three dead after the first night of bombing almost seemed to enrage a man called Patrick Hesters commenting early Saturday evening from the set of France 3, another state-run network which began its noon to 2 p.m. segment on Friday, after the first American raid, with footage of anti-war demonstrations.
Read the whole thing. I wonder how much anti-American sentiment worldwide is the product of slant at state-controlled or -subsidized media operations?
(Via Judicious Asininity).