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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (525174)	1/16/2004 2:49:39 PM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

one brave Frenchman in a country of whiteflaggers. Book Claims French Bias Against Iraq War By Eva Cahen CNSNews.com Correspondent January 16, 2004 Paris (CNSNews.com) - A French journalist says the French media consistently misrepresented U.S. positions on the Iraq war, emphasizing American setbacks and sympathizing with Saddam Hussein's predicament. Alain Hertoghe, deputy editor-in-chief of the Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix 's online website, noticed that accounts in five major French papers did not correspond to what he was seeing and reading in other reports from embedded journalists. "As an example," Hertoghe said, "there were 332 headlines on the advances of the American and British offensive against 388 headlines on the difficulties encountered." "If one only reads the headlines, one cannot understand how the American and British could have won." To study the issue, Hertoghe examined the editions of five major French dailies - Le Monde, Le Figaro, Liberation, La Croix and Ouest-France -- from March 20 to April 9, covering the first allied strikes to the fall of Baghdad. He wrote about his findings in a book entitled "La Guerre a Outrances" (The War of Excesses) subtitled "How the Press Misinformed us About Iraq," published by Calmann-Levy. Hertoghe said that the coverage was anti-American, in line with the French government's anti-war position, and full of "wishful thinking" that the war would end badly for the United States. "The facts and the commentary just did not match up," he said. "Information from the field was systematically used to make negative predictions and prophecies about the outcome of the war." The predictions used recurring vocabulary indicating that the war in Iraq would be a repetition of the war in Vietnam and that the siege of Baghdad would be like the disastrous WWII siege of Stalingrad by German forces. When Saddam's defense of Baghdad collapsed, Hertoghe said, Le Monde explained the quick resolution by saying that "upon seeing the brutality of the Americans, Saddam's soldiers preferred not to fight in order to protect the civilian population, which is laughable when we are talking about the Iraqi SS." Hertoghe wrote that during the period studied, he counted 29 headlines critical of Saddam and his regime but there were 135 headlines that characterized President George Bush, his administration and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair with words like "imperialist, violent, irresponsible and fundamentalist." When he finished the book last October, the author expected a debate on the issue. Instead, his book was greeted, Hertoghe said, "with spontaneous collective silence" from the French press. And then in late December, he was fired by his paper, officially because they claimed to have lost confidence in him. Hertoghe, however, believes he lost his job for speaking out. La Croix did not want to comment for this story, saying the journalist's dismissal was still under negotiation. Hertoghe, who is of Belgian origin and covered the first war in Iraq as well as the 2000 presidential campaign in the United States for La Croix, said he did not believe that misreporting was part of a plot by the French government or even by newspapers. "The first reason was anti-Americanism. George Bush represents the type of American that French people don't like and he and his administration provoked an anti-American sentiment in France," Hertoghe said. "The second reason was a nostalgia to see France play an essential role on the international scene. And then there was France's Arabophilia, and even if in France everyone knew Saddam was a dictator, the aspect of the Iraqi David resisting the American Goliath seemed appealing." In his book, Hertoghe also blames some of the journalists covering the region for having developed too much tolerance and complacency for dictatorial regimes. Hertoghe said he does not want to become a spokesman for criticism of the French press or French policy. "I wrote this book because what bothered me was that the dailies were not doing their job of informing the public but were misinforming readers instead." cnsnews.com\ForeignBureaus\archive\200401\FOR20040116d.html