Anti-American Reporting: Not Just Homegrown in the USA Anymore

A couple of reports on the firing of a French reporter for revealing the anti-American bias in French coverage of the War Against Saddam Hussein.

First, from the International Herald Tribune, Dec. 29. (IHT is owned, at least in part, by NYT.)

Alain Hertoghe believes that in covering the Iraq conflict, French newspapers recreated "the war they would have liked to have seen." That meant concentration on the Vietnams and Stalingrads that didn't take place, he said, and so many more accounts of U.S. difficulties rather than advances that it was "impossible to understand how the Americans won."

For making assertions like these in a book called "La Guerre à Outrances," subtitled "How the press disinformed us on Iraq" and published by Calmann Lévy, Hertoghe was fired this month from his post as deputy editor at the Web site of La Croix, a respected Roman Catholic daily newspaper.

The newspaper's management justified the dismissal, Hertoghe said in an interview, by contending that the book demonstrated his opposition to La Croix's editorial line, damaged the reputation of the newspaper and the authority of its chief editors and questioned the professional ethics of some of the paper's staff members.

Hertoghe's book covers the performance of four national newspapers and France's largest regional daily over a three-week period in March and April. It contends that the coverage was ideological, in line with the French government's position opposing the United States, and that it was desirous of portraying a great catastrophe for the Americans....

I must admit to being puzzled as to why this would actually have needed to be demonstrated.

Second, an AP article at Yahoo! News, yesterday:

Reporter Alain Hertoghe's book accused the French press of not being objective in its coverage of the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites). His newspaper fired him.

The book, "La Guerre a Outrances" (The War of Outrages), criticizes the French reporting for continually predicting the war would end badly for the U.S.-led coalition.

"Readers can't understand why the Americans won the war," Hertoghe said in a telephone interview. "The French press wasn't neutral." ....

There's a lesson here for American mainstream media re: the presidential election campaign of 2004. Too bad for them that they're not going to learn it.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 12/31/03 04:43:24 PM
Categorized as International.