{"id":433,"date":"2024-07-08T13:21:19","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T13:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=433"},"modified":"2024-07-08T13:21:19","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T13:21:19","slug":"demystifying-frances-political-miracle-columbia-journalism-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=433","title":{"rendered":"Demystifying France\u2019s \u2018political miracle\u2019 – Columbia Journalism Review"},"content":{"rendered":"


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A week ago\u2014<\/strong>after Marine Le Pen\u2019s far-right Rassemblement National (RN, or \u201cNational Rally\u201d in English) and its allies won the first round of snap legislative elections in France\u2014the world\u2019s press treated it as a seismic development, and with no little angst. Front pages the world over splashed images of a smiling Le Pen<\/a>, describing her party, variously, as \u201cso close to power\u201d and having achieved a \u201cprelude\u201d to its \u201ctriumph\u201d; one Italian newspaper mocked her up as Napoleon. (\u201cNapoLe Pen.\u201d) In the pages of the Washington Post<\/em>, Emmanuel Macron\u2014the putatively centrist president, who called the snap elections as a sort of challenge to surging far-right support\u2014was also compared to Napoleon<\/a>, albeit in the context of the latter\u2019s disastrous attempt to invade Russia in 1812; other papers emphasized the low score of Macron\u2019s parliamentary allies. (One christened him \u201cMicron.\u201d) The Spanish Diari de Tarragona<\/em> filled its front page with a dejected-looking drawing of Obelix, the French comic-book character, and a headline calling the French \u201ccrazy.\u201d \u201cFrench democracy speaks,\u201d a Swiss paper wrote<\/a>, \u201cand it\u2019s frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n

This morning, the headlines look very different<\/a>: The second round of the elections took place yesterday, and delivered a huge surprise. A coalition of left-wing parties won the most seats in the National Assembly, albeit falling well short of a governing majority; Macron\u2019s allies (who Politico<\/em> confidently predicted<\/a> would finish third \u201cat best\u201d) lost dozens of seats but still came in second ahead of Le Pen and her allies. French TV footage (which quickly went viral online) showed far-right supporters eagerly awaiting the results<\/a>, then looking stunned and crestfallen when they came through; one network, France 24, imposed the shock results on a diagram of the Assembly that erroneously showed<\/a> the far right with the biggest seat share. Semafor<\/em>\u2019s Ben Smith asked Pierre Haski, a veteran French commentator, how the media had failed to see the results coming<\/a>. He replied that journalists had become \u201cobsessed\u201d with the far right after its first-round victory and that pollsters had been confused by the \u201cuncharted territory,\u201d but that even left-wing leaders were surprised. He added, \u201cit\u2019s a political miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whiplash-inducing headlines offer globally relevant lessons about the folly of journalists assuming the popular will ahead of its expression. But the surprising topline results risk masking a much more complicated ongoing story. For starters (and as many headlines did also attest overnight) it\u2019s highly uncertain what will happen next: no party or bloc has a legislative majority, leaving the identity of the next prime minister unclear and elevating the odds of long-term chaos. (Macron is slated to remain president through 2027 whatever happens, but the new legislative arithmetic could significantly erode his power and force him to \u201ccohabit\u201d with a prime minister from a rival party.) Nor should the underperformance of the far right obscure the extent to which it has already eaten its way to the heart of French public life\u2014not least in the media arena. The election campaign offered further evidence of this trend, even if many voters ultimately said no.<\/p>\n

In the end, the far right finished third in terms of seats, despite clearly winning the first round of the elections, because what the French call the \u201crepublican front\u201d stood in its way<\/a>\u2014in many districts, candidates who qualified for the second round got out of the race to allow a rival to take on the far right alone, even in cases where they had huge political differences. The broader instinct to keep the far right from holding institutional power at all costs held for decades, not only in French partisan politics but in other spheres of society, including the media<\/a>. In some places, something like it holds still. Ahead of the first round, more than a hundred news outlets signed an open letter<\/a> calling for a journalistic \u201ccommon front\u201d against the far right and warning that its arrival in power would constitute a mortal threat to press freedom; the letter was signed by progressive and alternative publishers, but also by five staffers from the public broadcaster<\/a>. (As a result, they were taken off campaign-related coverage.) Hundreds of online creators also called for a mobilization against the far right, calling themselves \u201cthe popular Stream.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

On the whole, however, this instinct has grown weaker in recent years\u2014and, as I\u2019ve reported on numerous<\/a> occasions<\/a>, the media has been a key site of this dynamic. Many mainstream outlets have increasingly normalized hard-right themes and figures; in some cases, they\u2019ve been taken over by them. Most notably, the family business of Vincent Bollor\u00e9, a conservative billionaire, has snapped up important properties in print, TV, and radio, and been widely accused of dragging them toward the political right, a process sometimes referred to as Bollorisation<\/em>. (He has denied editorial meddling at his properties, saying this year that he is not \u201can Attila.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Bollor\u00e9 and his properties were at the heart of controversy again during the recent campaign. As it got underway, Le Monde<\/em> reported that Eric Ciotti, the leader of France\u2019s traditional conservative party, personally consulted with Bollor\u00e9<\/a> before announcing that he would form an electoral alliance with Le Pen, alienating many of his co-partisans and triggering no little drama in the process<\/a>. Then, right at the end of the campaign, Le<\/em> Journal du Dimanche<\/em>\u2014a once-staid paper that hired a hard-right editor while being acquired by Bollor\u00e9\u2019s group last year<\/a>\u2014reported that Macron\u2019s government was planning to loosen immigration restrictions<\/a>. Macron allies furiously denied the story<\/a>, accusing the paper <\/em>of \u201cTrumpist methods\u201d and of complicity with Le Pen\u2019s party. One official said that he would file a legal complaint on the grounds of \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There were campaign-related tensions beyond the Bollor\u00e9 universe, too. Ahead of the first round, a senior editor at Le Figaro<\/em>, a traditional conservative newspaper, went on Europe 1 (a radio station that Bollor\u00e9 owns) and made remarks that some of his staff perceived as supportive of the alliance between Ciotti and Le Pen\u2019s party<\/a>; the editor said he was only offering his \u201canalysis\u201d and that Le Figaro <\/em>would not back Le Pen, but ahead of the second round, dozens of staffers were reportedly up in arms again<\/a> after he suggested in an editorial that, while the far-right program was \u201cworrying\u201d in many respects, the far left posed a bigger threat. (He reportedly denied again that the paper was moving to the far right.) Elsewhere, staffers at Marianne<\/em>, a magazine currently owned by the controversial Czech billionaire Daniel K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd<\/a>, went on strike<\/a> after Le Monde<\/em> reported that a businessman interested in buying the publication has ties to Le Pen and her allies. (The status of his bid now appears to be in limbo.)<\/p>\n

As indicated by these developments and the election-time letter, French journalists have not all watched quietly as parts of their industry have moved in a rightward direction. (The letter warned explicitly that the media has been \u201cfavored terrain\u201d in the far right\u2019s strategy of \u201cconquest.\u201d) And as I wrote in March, this dynamic has faced other forms of friction, including an official order for France\u2019s broadcast regulator to more strictly police the pluralism obligations of a Bollor\u00e9-owned TV channel, and an ongoing process by which the regulator will decide which channels get to make use of terrestrial frequencies that are owned by the state; starting today, the regulator will hear applications from existing and interested channels, a process that is likely to bring<\/a> additional scrutiny<\/a> to Bollor\u00e9\u2019s properties and could even see them lose out. But Alexis L\u00e9vrier, a media historian, told me in March that he thinks the regulator is unlikely to take such strong action and that, in general, the political elite appears scared of standing in Bollor\u00e9\u2019s way.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the French electorate did stand in the way of Le Pen and her allies, at least in terms of allowing them to enter government. The \u201crepublican front\u201d held. To the extent that sympathizers of her project and others like it have indeed made the media their \u201cfavored terrain,\u201d it\u2019s tempting to argue that they have failed, at least for now; as another media historian, Claire S\u00e9cail, put it ahead of the first round of the elections<\/a>, \u201cFrench society, in its plurality and complexity, is not what the polarized Bollor\u00e9 ecosystem wants to present it as.\u201d (Respecting such complexity is itself a globally relevant media lesson.) For her part, Le Pen suggested yesterday that \u201cthe press\u201d had helped to block her party from power<\/a>, accusing it of \u201cclearly taking part\u201d in the election on behalf of a coalition spanning the French political landscape.<\/p>\n

If this was\u2014at least\u2014a grotesque overgeneralization, Le Pen had a point when she also noted that the party made significant gains in terms of its number of seats yesterday, despite its perceived underperformance. \u201cThe tide is rising,\u201d she told an interviewer from TF1. \u201cIt didn\u2019t rise high enough this time, but it\u2019s still rising. Our victory is only delayed.\u201d Time will tell if she\u2019s right about that. For now, those covering French politics should not overstate the health of the \u201crepublican front,\u201d nor take their eyes off the progress the far right has made to this point. This morning, parts of the international press kept their eyes on the ball. \u201cFrance and Europe can breathe a sigh of relief,\u201d the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet<\/em> wrote<\/a>. But \u201cthe election results don\u2019t signify that the Rassemblement National is finished. Quite the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other notable stories:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

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  • On Friday, President Biden sat for his first televised interview<\/a> since his disastrous debate performance a week prior, with ABC\u2019s George Stephanopoulos; he insisted that he is well enough to run against Donald Trump in the fall, but the interview does not appear to have stopped him bleeding support, with more top Democrats calling on him to drop out. Biden also did a pair of local radio interviews last week, for which his campaign provided questions in advance; Andrea Lawful-Sanders, a host on WURD in Philadelphia, used the questions and has since parted ways with the station<\/a>. Meanwhile, Axios<\/em>\u2019 Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen argue that Biden now has a \u201ccredibility crisis,\u201d not least with members of the press<\/a>. And Alex Thompson, an Axios<\/em> reporter who has long covered concerns about Biden\u2019s age, spoke with Josh Hersh on CJR\u2019s podcast The Kicker<\/em><\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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    • The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Janay Kingsberry profiled The Shade Room<\/em><\/a>\u2014a \u201cburgeoning Black media empire\u201d that has gone from an Instagram page offering biting commentary and celebrity gossip to covering Biden as part of the White House press pool. \u201cThe growth signals how much the platform has become a cultural force in the Black community, wielding enough power to not only cover culture but also to shape it,\u201d Kingsberry writes. The site \u201chas often faced accusations of spreading misinformation,\u201d but \u201cas Black Americans increasingly turn to social media for political engagement, TSR remains a target for elected officials, including Barack Obama, Biden and [Kamala] Harris, who have stepped \u2018into The Shade Room\u2019 to address issues affecting the Black community.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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      • And WNYC, the New York public radio station, turns a hundred today<\/a>. To mark the anniversary, hosts Brian Lehrer, Michael Hill, and Brooke Gladstone have recorded special announcements for the city\u2019s subway system, whose riders will also hear \u201ctidbits of New York and WNYC history,\u201d including old coverage of a Yankees World Series win and an interview with a fish from a Staten Island zoo. WNYC is also hosting a \u201cre-imagining\u201d of its first broadcast, while the Empire State Building will be lit in its honor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        ICYMI: What does the Washington Post <\/em>newsroom want?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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        Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books<\/i>, Foreign Policy<\/i>, and The Nation<\/i>, among other outlets. He writes CJR\u2019s newsletter The Media Today<\/i>. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop<\/a>.<\/strong><\/small><\/p><\/div>\n