Posts tagged france
Al Jazeera Will Not Air French Murder Video
Good case study for a journalism ethics class.
Via Al Jazeera:
Al Jazeera has said it will not air a video that it received showing three shooting attacks in Toulouse and Montauban in southern France this month.
The network on Tuesday said the video did not add any information that was not already in public domain. It also did not meet the television station’s code of ethics for broadcast.
The video shows the attacks in chronological order, with audible gunshots and voices of the killer and the victims. But it does not show the face of the confessed murderer, Mohammed Merah, and it does not contain a statement from him…
…Merah boasted of filming his killings and witnesses told police that he appeared to be wearing a video camera in a chest harness.
…Zied Tarrouche, Al Jazeera’s Paris bureau chief, said the images were a bit shaky but of a high technical quality. He also said the video had clearly been manipulated after the fact, with religious songs and recitations of Quranic verses laid over the footage.
From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a campaign rally in Eastern France proposes criminal penalties for citizens who visit Web sites that advocate hate or violence. He spoke in the aftermath of the murders of seven people by an Al Qaeda inspired gunman.
Electronic Frontier Foundation, French President Sarkozy Sees Opportunity for Censorship, Seizes It.
As the EFF notes, there are serious issues the proposal, among them: who defines hate speech; it hasn’t been shown that “criminalizing access to hate speech or terrorist content will end the very real problems of hate crime and terrorism”; and once a criminalization regime takes place it’s a very small step to censorship and “overblocking”.
Very important internationally:
When a democratic country such as France decides to censor or criminalize speech, it is not just the French that suffer, but the world, as authoritarian regimes are given easy justification for their own censorship. We [the EFF] urge French authorities to judge crime on action, not expression.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Lucie Morillon of Reporters Without Borders wonders whether Sarkozy proposes a full-fledged Internet surveillance system in France.
Social Media? That’s So 17th Century
Via Open Culture:
Before there was Twitter, Facebook and Google+, Europeans living in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had to deal with their own version of information overload. Emerging postal systems, the proliferation of short letters called billets, and the birth of newspapers and pamphlets all pumped unprecedented amounts of information — valuable information, gossip, chatter and the rest — through newly-emerging social networks, which eventually played a critical role in the French Revolution, much like Twitter and Facebook proved instrumental in organizing the Arab Spring.
![We’re about to get grammatically obnoxious.
latimes:
There was a festive mood in Paris Thursday, where [when | edit: reference is to time rather than place] two journalists were cheered by colleagues after their release from capture in Afghanistan. The pair were [was | “pair” is singular] captured [with their Afghan driver and translator | let’s keep everyone together] on Dec. 29, 2009 [edit: hey, that’s my birthday! Shout out?], northeast of the capital of Kabul with their Afghan driver and translator. Check out more Ppictures in the Nnews. [Hey, let’s do but why the initial caps?]
Photo: Television journalist Herve Ghesquiere, left, is cheered by colleagues as he arrives at a gathering at France Television headquarters [edit: tell “France Television” they should rename themselves “French Television”]. Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier, held hostage in Afghanistan for a year and a half [along with their Afghan driver and translator | let’s put people together], were captured on Dec. 29, 2009 [Again, my birthday, let’s celebrate], in Kapisa province, northeast of the capital Kabul, along with their Afghan driver and translator. [edit: Wait a sec, doesn’t this repeat everything in the first graph?] Credit: Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters [How ‘bout a period and a little link love back to Gonzalo and Reuters?]
Feel free to hit us with the same anytime. Our typos are all over the place.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnmhhqwXrS1qzss4xo1_400.jpg)
We’re about to get grammatically obnoxious.
There was a festive mood in Paris Thursday,
where[when | edit: reference is to time rather than place] two journalists were cheered by colleagues after their release from capture in Afghanistan. The pairwere[was | “pair” is singular] captured [with their Afghan driver and translator | let’s keep everyone together] on Dec. 29, 2009 [edit: hey, that’s my birthday! Shout out?], northeast of the capital of Kabulwith their Afghan driver and translator. Check out morePpictures in theNnews. [Hey, let’s do but why the initial caps?]Photo: Television journalist Herve Ghesquiere, left, is cheered by colleagues as he arrives at a gathering at France Television headquarters [edit: tell “France Television” they should rename themselves “French Television”]. Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier, held hostage in Afghanistan for a year and a half [along with their Afghan driver and translator | let’s put people together], were captured on Dec. 29, 2009 [Again, my birthday, let’s celebrate], in Kapisa province, northeast of the capital Kabul,
along with their Afghan driver and translator. [edit: Wait a sec, doesn’t this repeat everything in the first graph?] Credit: Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters [How ‘bout a period and a little link love back to Gonzalo and Reuters?]
Feel free to hit us with the same anytime. Our typos are all over the place.
Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?
This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box — other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?’
Spokesperson for France’s television regulatory commission discussing the country’s enforcement of a 1992 law that will prevent television and radio stations from actively mentioning Facebook and Twitter unless the story being reported is specifically about those companies.
What does that mean? That broadcasters can’t say things like, “Follow us on Twitter,” or “Join us on Facebook,” followed by the URL.
As ZDNet reports, “The ban stems from a decree issued by the French government on March 27, 1992, which forbids the promotion of commercial enterprises on news programs.”
“All journalists knew he had a special behavior with women,” said Marion Van Renterghem, a reporter for Le Monde. “I was not so much surprised because I knew that he had this vice, but it was flabbergasting because why did all we journalists, considering what we knew about him — why did we never write a line about this?”
She added: “There is this very strong tradition in France that you don’t have here, in Anglo-Saxon countries, is not to speak about private life. This is very, very sacred, so we are all embarrassed to talk about and to write about these things.
