II. B) The French Presidential Elections and the conflict between two cast of media
The 7th of May 2017, the French people will vote for their President in the five next years, but also vote for the path France will take in the future.
Strongly influenced by the American elections but as well by the Brexit, French elections are now watched and carefully followed, as its future is closely linked with Europe integrity and politics.
Today, April 1st May, we currently are at the second turn of these elections where only two candidates remain in the race for presidency:
-Emmanuel Macron
-Marine le Pen
The interesting aspect about these two candidates are the two different world view they represent, and the way they are being treated by the media.
The first one, Emmanuel Macron, is a man of only 39 years old who represents a moderated and centrist pro European / Liberal politic. He is strongly supported by the french and international press as well as the current government that he was part of.
Meanwhile the second candidate, Marine le Pen, is a women of 48 years old ruling a far right party named "Front National". She is very often the subject of critics and depicted as a "calamity" (Le Monde, 2017) if she would win this presidential. She is strongly supported by non-Western medias, but also by Vladimir Putin who met her earlier this year.
What is interesting in this election, very similar to the American, due to two ideological opposed candidates, is the role medias are playing. In the same case as the Syrian situation, Media choose their side from the beginning without putting themselves in question on certain subjects and not hesitating to promote fake informations in order to convince the masses for which candidates they should vote in both cases. Recent information shown that the centrist candidate, Emmanuel Macron, even banned the journalists from any Russian Channel News to follow him in his campaign.
Not only is this campaign an ideological fight between extremism and centrist, this election also is the representation of an actual situation in the world between the "winner" of the globalisation and the one left on the side, watching these people amassing more and more capital.
One hundred years exactly after the Russian Revolution, symbol of the class conflict, a new conflict of the exact same kind is occurring, although we have been hearing that the globalisation would benefit to all of us and that going against it was a symbol of conservatism and enemy against progress.
The main point of this article is to show the non-objectivity of the media when it comes to elections because of their ownership to people who will always privilege their own interest better than the value of spreading knowledge and informations. Which is why, it is essential, whoever and wherever the candidate is coming from to inform ourselves from different sources to have a multipolarity of opinions and make our own.
To get more information about it:
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/386329-french-elections-lepen-macron/
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201704281053101709-france-presidential-runoff-macron-le-pen/
http://observer.case.edu/french-election-sees-rise-in-populism/
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/24/europe/french-election-marine-le-pen-macron/
Strongly influenced by the American elections but as well by the Brexit, French elections are now watched and carefully followed, as its future is closely linked with Europe integrity and politics.
Today, April 1st May, we currently are at the second turn of these elections where only two candidates remain in the race for presidency:
-Emmanuel Macron
-Marine le Pen
The interesting aspect about these two candidates are the two different world view they represent, and the way they are being treated by the media.
The first one, Emmanuel Macron, is a man of only 39 years old who represents a moderated and centrist pro European / Liberal politic. He is strongly supported by the french and international press as well as the current government that he was part of.
Meanwhile the second candidate, Marine le Pen, is a women of 48 years old ruling a far right party named "Front National". She is very often the subject of critics and depicted as a "calamity" (Le Monde, 2017) if she would win this presidential. She is strongly supported by non-Western medias, but also by Vladimir Putin who met her earlier this year.
What is interesting in this election, very similar to the American, due to two ideological opposed candidates, is the role medias are playing. In the same case as the Syrian situation, Media choose their side from the beginning without putting themselves in question on certain subjects and not hesitating to promote fake informations in order to convince the masses for which candidates they should vote in both cases. Recent information shown that the centrist candidate, Emmanuel Macron, even banned the journalists from any Russian Channel News to follow him in his campaign.
Not only is this campaign an ideological fight between extremism and centrist, this election also is the representation of an actual situation in the world between the "winner" of the globalisation and the one left on the side, watching these people amassing more and more capital.
One hundred years exactly after the Russian Revolution, symbol of the class conflict, a new conflict of the exact same kind is occurring, although we have been hearing that the globalisation would benefit to all of us and that going against it was a symbol of conservatism and enemy against progress.
The main point of this article is to show the non-objectivity of the media when it comes to elections because of their ownership to people who will always privilege their own interest better than the value of spreading knowledge and informations. Which is why, it is essential, whoever and wherever the candidate is coming from to inform ourselves from different sources to have a multipolarity of opinions and make our own.
To get more information about it:
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/386329-french-elections-lepen-macron/
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201704281053101709-france-presidential-runoff-macron-le-pen/
http://observer.case.edu/french-election-sees-rise-in-populism/
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/24/europe/french-election-marine-le-pen-macron/
It is a very interesting topic and it is definitely true that as soon a media become privatised, usually they start to produce the content that will be profitable for them, and of course there is a certain distortion of information regarding political events. Are you familiar with any cases when French media became privatised by a person from the government or an entrepreneur? Because there are several such examples in my country and I am curious to know if it can happen in France and which effects would it have :)
RépondreSupprimerThank you for your answer.
SupprimerIn a country such as France, having a politician directly owning a Media could not be tolerated. However, having entrepreneurs owning some, is the ordinary. The problem with these is therefore how they interact with politics and how does it influences the fact that they own these Medias or not. I will give you the example of Patrick Drahi, he owns one of the most important Media in France, called BFMTV, and during the presidential elections was one of the stronger support of Emmanuel Macron. In such cases, it is evident that the informations that will be promoted by his channel will have an interest into promoting one candidate and showing a negative part of the other.
They also are many others people like him such as Martin Bouygues, Vincent Bolloré, Bernard Tapie... who today have a direct impact on the information shown, that is influenced according to their best interests.
I hope I was able to answer your question!