Before you condemn Fox News as the most outrageous media outlet in
the world, have a look at the English version of French state television.
the world, have a look at the English version of French state television.
France 24 News, 11 p.m., FACE TV (Sky Channel 83), Tuesday 16 Jan. 2018
We are depressingly accustomed to television “news” being often little more than a conduit of state propaganda, whether it’s on the BBC, ABC (the Australian one), RT, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, PBS, CBS, ABC (the American one), NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and our own TVNZ and NewsHub. As craven as all of the above are, however, the other night I saw something that equalled, perhaps even surpassed, all of the above for sheer brass-plated, malicious, bloody-minded dishonesty: I watched the first ten minutes of the English version of France 24.
The alarm bells were ringing on this from the first live cross on the very first item, about the call for the PLO to cut its ties with Israel. That cross was to “our correspondent in the region, Irris Makler.” Now, long-time listeners will remember that we encountered this shamelessly one-sided Israeli-Australian back in July 2011 when RNZ National wheeled her on to talk about a convoy of peace activists trying to break the illegal blockade of Gaza. She joked to Kathryn Ryan that the Gaza peace convoy was “dead in the water”, sneered that there were “celebrities like Alice Walker” on board, and ignored the presence of the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein. [1] A week later, she was still defaming peace protestors, this time for Deutsche-Welle. [2])
It turns out that Irris Makler has not changed her modus operandi in the slightest: “You know Palestinians will pay a price internationally,” she intoned darkly. Then she claimed, in contradiction to all evidence, that the Oslo agreements had led to “great changes” in the Occupied Territories.
Unbelievably, there was worse to come. The newsreader, one Alexander Aucott, introduced the next item, about Ahed Tamimi, the 16 year old Palestinian girl arrested and charged for slapping an armed IDF soldier. He read out, with a straight face, that she had been:
caught on film pushing, kicking, and hitting the soldiers, who did not respond. The video provoked outrage in Israel, but she has been hailed as a hero by Palestinians.”
Alexander Aucott should have mentioned that just before Ahed Tamimi slapped one of the soldiers who’d invaded her yard, she had learned that her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed had been shot in the head at close range by an Israeli soldier. But for some reason Aucott—or more likely, his scriptwriter—chose to ignore all that and instead portray her as an aggressor and the soldier as a victim. It’s not many years since French state media and scurrilous tabloids approvingly covered the Sarkozy government’s loading of gypsies on to trains and expelling them from France. Clearly, honesty and integrity still count for little or nothing in the French state media.
The impression of shabbiness and lack of professionalism was only magnified by the appearance of Alexander Aucott, who looks like a young, scruffy clone of Neil Kinnock, and glowers at the camera reproachfully as he mouths his loaded lines. The wretchedness of all this was only magnified by its following immediately after a brilliant Democracy Now! special on Martin Luther King.
