6 ms·

> Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. How much of this

> Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. How much of this is driven by contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting? I’m not familiar with French media, but I see the same pattern in every country where I’ve kept up with the news: Media starts being favorable to a topic when it’s up and coming, switching to being highly critical when that topic becomes mainstream, then reverts again to exploring the positives when the topic falls out of favor. You see it even with people like Elizabeth Holmes. News stories about her fraud were everywhere until she had to go to jail, but now the news has swung to humanizing her, claiming her sentencing was excessive, focusing on the angle of a mother separated from her children, and confusingly ignoring her fraud at all. It’s all designed to be counter-narrative and rise waves of controversy. The more controversial, the more shares and views.

dijit 1y ago
I have a much less charitable view than you about Elizabeth Holmes. The fact that a new publicist was hired by her before all the sympathetic press started coming out is enough for me to believe that there's a link there and not a natural news swing cycle. https://www.theverge.com/news/611549/elizabeth-holmes-people-jailhouse-interview https://www.theverge.com/news/611549/elizabeth-holmes-people...
- orionsbelt 1y ago
  I don’t have a strong enough view here to have an opinion, but I think someone as rich as her always had a publicist, so to play devils advocate, it may be true that the press only played ball with the publicist after she was convicted.
  - mattnewton 1y ago
    Elizabeth Holmes had some very big fish as investors she ended up defrauding, so it’s possible the devil’s best advocates were busy advocating she go to jail before her sentence.
  - stickfigure 1y ago
    Or maybe just the new publicist is better than the old publicist? Or maybe it's a simple change of strategy; the goal is now "rehabilitate image" rather than "prevent conviction" - and with the new strategy, a new team.
scotty79 1y ago
This reminds me so much of fashion and what young people find cool and not as the time passes. Enslaving our media to what triggers the cravings of the masses was probably one of the dumbest thing we did. And we owe it, like many other terrible things, to ad industry. It's a parasite of the economy and cancer of society. Serves no useful purpose beyond what an open access database of all products and services could cheaply fulfill.
Foobar8568 1y ago
French media are owned by his literal relatives, one (Bouygues, owner of the largest French /media? With TF1 etc.) being the witness of one of his wedding and godfather of his son Louis. The other son is married to the heir of Darty/FNAC. I don't remember where Dassault (major newspaper owner) fits but they were both close as well.
- adolph 1y ago
  Dassault (major newspaper owner) Is that like Lockheed Martin owning a major newspaper or GE owning a TV network?
  - vkou 1y ago
    Or SpaceX owning Twitter, or the president owning Truth Social?
    - votepaunchy 1y ago
      Or Amazon owning the Washington Post.
      - nailer 1y ago
        Or journalists everywhere shaping stories to their own biases.
        alessandru 1y ago
        almost like ... journalistic integrity and ... maybe less monopoly ... are good things
        stefs 1y ago
        that is not the same.
        nailer 1y ago
aj_hackman 1y ago
I don't think this is a deliberate ruse, but news organizations giving in to public pressure. I remember the NBC coverage of the conflict in Gaza in the days immediately following October 7, and how their narrative swung rapidly as public consensus against the IDF developed.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nailer 1y ago
  The public pressure against “the IDF” (but really against Jewish people) came from Qatari sponsorship of US higher education. If you dislike AIPAC you should dislike Qatar much more, for their budget is much higher.
  - selimthegrim 1y ago
    Qatar gave a great deal of money to Tulane University - if you want to call an insititution with a 40% Jewish student body anti-Semitic I don't know what to say to you.
    - nailer 1y ago
      Are you saying the donation wouldn’t have an effect?
      - selimthegrim 1y ago
        They were not against the IDF as an institution.
  - aj_hackman 1y ago
    I made a deliberate effort to neutralize my statement as much as possible. We could argue on this issue, but what we can't disagree on is the fact that there's an issue (which is all that's relevant to the point I was trying to make).
ransom1538 1y ago
Imprisoning political prisoners is a great kick off to a bright future (historically speaking).
- nemo 1y ago
  Failing to hold those in power accountable for their corruption has not been something that has produced positive outcomes, historically.
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  What is your definition of a "political prisoner"?
- seszett 1y ago
  Sarkozy is not a political prisoner though. He's a politician that committed fraud by taking foreign money to finance his electoral campaign. Once elected he then proceeded to declare war to the dictator who gave him that money and eventually got him killed. That last point is sadly not in the scope of the judgement.
  - derektank 1y ago
    Are we crying tears over Muammar Gaddafi here? The man was a butcher and NATO was completely justified in imposing a no fly zone and supporting the National Transition Council in Libya. There was a UN Security Council resolution authorizing it. Lots of things to criticize Sarkozy for but his support for the intervention is not one of them.
    - holoduke 1y ago
      As a result the country entered dark ages with suffering unseen before. Of course Gaddafi was betrayed by the French. Just like France is betraying all of their former colonies.
      - Agingcoder 1y ago
bobmcnamara 1y ago
It's a phase lead relationship. Much like a brushless motor controller, if you pull towards the direction the rotors already faces, it's uninteresting. But if you lead the momentum in a different direction...
returningfory2 1y ago
Thank you so much for this comment - you've put a name ("contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting") on a phenomenon that I've observed a lot and is one of the main reasons I don't consume the media anymore. The craziest example for me was NYC congestion pricing. When it was about to happen, all the reporting was about all of the downsides of the tolls starting. A week after the New York Governor "indefinitely paused" congestion pricing, the reporting was all about the downsides of the tolls not starting.
- hamandcheese 1y ago
  So the media intentionally stirs controversy and they aren't even getting paid to do it by hostile states or the ultra-wealthy? There really is no hope is there.
  - Telemakhos 1y ago
    The media relies first and foremost on advertising revenue, which depends on ratings or viewership metrics, which become the goal. The more viewers you get, the more expensive advertising slots become: the point stops being to report the facts and starts being to engage the audience at an emotional level, so that they come back for more.
    - bobthepanda 1y ago
      the newsroom did used to be slightly more insulated when advertising was limited by technology, but once the doors blew open with Craigslist and other online ads it became a craven race to the bottom for both attention and shrinking the newsroom
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    There really is no hope is there. No, there's not. The incentives are hopelessly misaligned. If the biggest, most profitable story is the destruction of civilization itself, then the news media -- which like so many other institutions in our society is owned by people too old or too wealthy to suffer the eventual consequences -- will cheer it on.
kakwa_ 1y ago
No, it's not some kind of clickbait strategy to drive views. Driving an agenda is. Most of French media, specially newspapers, are money sinks only surviving because they are useful to push the rent-seeking business or ideological agenda of their owners (Dassault, Bouygues, Lagardere, Arnault, Bettencourt, Saade, Pinault, Niel). Also, just for context, Martin Bouygues, Bernard Arnault and Vincent Bollore, the respective owners of TF1 (main French TV channel), Le Parisien (major newspaper) and CNews/Europe1 (major TV channel & radio) are personal friends of Sarkozy (a la "witness at your wedding, god father of your son or let's celebrate your election on my yacht" kind of way). The Figaro (main right-wing newspaper in France) and its owners, the Dassault family, are also not far away. Seeing the Figaro website was actually quite funny. Because the evidences are so damming, their main page was textbook "how to propagate fake news with plausible deniability". It was mainly pro-Sarkozy Editorials/Tribunes from non-journalists people, articles titled with quotes from Sarkozy's supporters and the few articles actually on the case were about the side stories. French press ownership map: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA#&gid=1&pid=1 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA#&gid=1&pid=1 There are only two truly independent major media left in France: Mediaparte (the ones we have to thanks for Sarkozy's well deserved condemnations) and Le Canard Enchaine (a bunch of scandals, but lately, the "Affaire Fillion"). The rest is either owned by billionaires, state run, or is far smaller and doesn't have the aura, size & credibility to reveal such scandals.
- neves 1y ago
  What about Le Monde Diplomatique?
  - keane 1y ago
    In April 2024, Le Monde Group’s majority stakeholder became a financial endowment, or fonds de dotation (FDD), named Fonds pour l'indépendance de la presse. En: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/about-us/article/2023/09/24/two-major-milestones-for-le-monde-s-independence_6139073_115.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/about-us/article/2023/09/24/two-ma... Fr: https://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2023/09/24/deux-avancees-importantes-pour-l-independance-du-groupe-le-monde_6190791_3236.html https://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2023/09/24/d... This was the result of journalist demands, covered here: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/le_monde_daniel_kretinsky.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/le_monde_daniel_kretinsk... This structure is also used by Mediapart, owned by Fonds pour une presse libre, and Libération, owned by Fonds de dotation pour une presse indépendante, with Mediapart being inspired to emulate The Manchester Guardian (which has been operated by a trust since 1936): https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/le-monde-appartient-desormais-a-un-fonds-de-dotation-2090655 https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/le-monde-appartie...
baby 1y ago
There is some of that, but most often the contrarian news is commissioned and paid for, and if it succeeds then you get organic growth
greatgib 1y ago
It's hard to imagine but they are not contrarian fueled articles. It's not the usual thing, here are only interviews of their closed one with their verbatim highlighted. Words of support from public figures. The day before going to jail he was received at the current president office (like the french Whitehouse) the day after, the "justice minister" went to see him in jail to give him his support. You have editorial like "Sarkozy stays honorable and magnificent despite an illegal non proof based sentence" "His wife so sad that this hero of the nation that did so much, proud father, beloved by his friends, will have to live this hard experience" All days long. A few examples just to give one newspaper: https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980589938941874341 https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980589938941874341 Or "Sarkozy in jail, the fault of the justice!" https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980567283157139926 https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980567283157139926 And we now all know well what book "he will bring" to show how honorable is this man: "The count of Monte Cristo", "life of Jesus Christ", ...
mk89 1y ago
It's not always to gain views, because you can often see that the relative directors/presidents of such media companies openly support certain types of people. The way I see it, especially lately in Germany, is really about elections and politics. Even a stupid article can lead to "i will vote for xyz" in no time. I would agree with you if media didn't have a direction, but in many cases they do.

dijit 1y ago

I have a much less charitable view than you about Elizabeth Holmes. The fact that a new publicist was hired by her before all the sympathetic press started coming out is enough for me to believe that there's a link there and not a natural news swing cycle. https://www.theverge.com/news/611549/elizabeth-holmes-people-jailhouse-interview https://www.theverge.com/news/611549/elizabeth-holmes-people...

orionsbelt 1y ago
I don’t have a strong enough view here to have an opinion, but I think someone as rich as her always had a publicist, so to play devils advocate, it may be true that the press only played ball with the publicist after she was convicted.
- mattnewton 1y ago
  Elizabeth Holmes had some very big fish as investors she ended up defrauding, so it’s possible the devil’s best advocates were busy advocating she go to jail before her sentence.
- stickfigure 1y ago
  Or maybe just the new publicist is better than the old publicist? Or maybe it's a simple change of strategy; the goal is now "rehabilitate image" rather than "prevent conviction" - and with the new strategy, a new team.

scotty79 1y ago

This reminds me so much of fashion and what young people find cool and not as the time passes. Enslaving our media to what triggers the cravings of the masses was probably one of the dumbest thing we did. And we owe it, like many other terrible things, to ad industry. It's a parasite of the economy and cancer of society. Serves no useful purpose beyond what an open access database of all products and services could cheaply fulfill.

Foobar8568 1y ago

French media are owned by his literal relatives, one (Bouygues, owner of the largest French /media? With TF1 etc.) being the witness of one of his wedding and godfather of his son Louis. The other son is married to the heir of Darty/FNAC. I don't remember where Dassault (major newspaper owner) fits but they were both close as well.

adolph 1y ago
Dassault (major newspaper owner) Is that like Lockheed Martin owning a major newspaper or GE owning a TV network?
- vkou 1y ago
  Or SpaceX owning Twitter, or the president owning Truth Social?
  - votepaunchy 1y ago
    Or Amazon owning the Washington Post.
    - nailer 1y ago
      Or journalists everywhere shaping stories to their own biases.
      - alessandru 1y ago
        almost like ... journalistic integrity and ... maybe less monopoly ... are good things
      - stefs 1y ago
        that is not the same.
        nailer 1y ago

aj_hackman 1y ago

I don't think this is a deliberate ruse, but news organizations giving in to public pressure. I remember the NBC coverage of the conflict in Gaza in the days immediately following October 7, and how their narrative swung rapidly as public consensus against the IDF developed.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nailer 1y ago
The public pressure against “the IDF” (but really against Jewish people) came from Qatari sponsorship of US higher education. If you dislike AIPAC you should dislike Qatar much more, for their budget is much higher.
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  Qatar gave a great deal of money to Tulane University - if you want to call an insititution with a 40% Jewish student body anti-Semitic I don't know what to say to you.
  - nailer 1y ago
    Are you saying the donation wouldn’t have an effect?
    - selimthegrim 1y ago
      They were not against the IDF as an institution.
- aj_hackman 1y ago
  I made a deliberate effort to neutralize my statement as much as possible. We could argue on this issue, but what we can't disagree on is the fact that there's an issue (which is all that's relevant to the point I was trying to make).

ransom1538 1y ago

Imprisoning political prisoners is a great kick off to a bright future (historically speaking).

nemo 1y ago
Failing to hold those in power accountable for their corruption has not been something that has produced positive outcomes, historically.
candiddevmike 1y ago
What is your definition of a "political prisoner"?
seszett 1y ago
Sarkozy is not a political prisoner though. He's a politician that committed fraud by taking foreign money to finance his electoral campaign. Once elected he then proceeded to declare war to the dictator who gave him that money and eventually got him killed. That last point is sadly not in the scope of the judgement.
- derektank 1y ago
  Are we crying tears over Muammar Gaddafi here? The man was a butcher and NATO was completely justified in imposing a no fly zone and supporting the National Transition Council in Libya. There was a UN Security Council resolution authorizing it. Lots of things to criticize Sarkozy for but his support for the intervention is not one of them.
  - holoduke 1y ago
    As a result the country entered dark ages with suffering unseen before. Of course Gaddafi was betrayed by the French. Just like France is betraying all of their former colonies.
    - Agingcoder 1y ago

bobmcnamara 1y ago

It's a phase lead relationship. Much like a brushless motor controller, if you pull towards the direction the rotors already faces, it's uninteresting. But if you lead the momentum in a different direction...

returningfory2 1y ago

Thank you so much for this comment - you've put a name ("contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting") on a phenomenon that I've observed a lot and is one of the main reasons I don't consume the media anymore. The craziest example for me was NYC congestion pricing. When it was about to happen, all the reporting was about all of the downsides of the tolls starting. A week after the New York Governor "indefinitely paused" congestion pricing, the reporting was all about the downsides of the tolls not starting.

hamandcheese 1y ago
So the media intentionally stirs controversy and they aren't even getting paid to do it by hostile states or the ultra-wealthy? There really is no hope is there.
- Telemakhos 1y ago
  The media relies first and foremost on advertising revenue, which depends on ratings or viewership metrics, which become the goal. The more viewers you get, the more expensive advertising slots become: the point stops being to report the facts and starts being to engage the audience at an emotional level, so that they come back for more.
  - bobthepanda 1y ago
    the newsroom did used to be slightly more insulated when advertising was limited by technology, but once the doors blew open with Craigslist and other online ads it became a craven race to the bottom for both attention and shrinking the newsroom
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  There really is no hope is there. No, there's not. The incentives are hopelessly misaligned. If the biggest, most profitable story is the destruction of civilization itself, then the news media -- which like so many other institutions in our society is owned by people too old or too wealthy to suffer the eventual consequences -- will cheer it on.

kakwa_ 1y ago

No, it's not some kind of clickbait strategy to drive views. Driving an agenda is. Most of French media, specially newspapers, are money sinks only surviving because they are useful to push the rent-seeking business or ideological agenda of their owners (Dassault, Bouygues, Lagardere, Arnault, Bettencourt, Saade, Pinault, Niel). Also, just for context, Martin Bouygues, Bernard Arnault and Vincent Bollore, the respective owners of TF1 (main French TV channel), Le Parisien (major newspaper) and CNews/Europe1 (major TV channel & radio) are personal friends of Sarkozy (a la "witness at your wedding, god father of your son or let's celebrate your election on my yacht" kind of way). The Figaro (main right-wing newspaper in France) and its owners, the Dassault family, are also not far away. Seeing the Figaro website was actually quite funny. Because the evidences are so damming, their main page was textbook "how to propagate fake news with plausible deniability". It was mainly pro-Sarkozy Editorials/Tribunes from non-journalists people, articles titled with quotes from Sarkozy's supporters and the few articles actually on the case were about the side stories. French press ownership map: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA#&gid=1&pid=1 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA#&gid=1&pid=1 There are only two truly independent major media left in France: Mediaparte (the ones we have to thanks for Sarkozy's well deserved condemnations) and Le Canard Enchaine (a bunch of scandals, but lately, the "Affaire Fillion"). The rest is either owned by billionaires, state run, or is far smaller and doesn't have the aura, size & credibility to reveal such scandals.

neves 1y ago
What about Le Monde Diplomatique?
- keane 1y ago
  In April 2024, Le Monde Group’s majority stakeholder became a financial endowment, or fonds de dotation (FDD), named Fonds pour l'indépendance de la presse. En: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/about-us/article/2023/09/24/two-major-milestones-for-le-monde-s-independence_6139073_115.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/about-us/article/2023/09/24/two-ma... Fr: https://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2023/09/24/deux-avancees-importantes-pour-l-independance-du-groupe-le-monde_6190791_3236.html https://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2023/09/24/d... This was the result of journalist demands, covered here: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/le_monde_daniel_kretinsky.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/le_monde_daniel_kretinsk... This structure is also used by Mediapart, owned by Fonds pour une presse libre, and Libération, owned by Fonds de dotation pour une presse indépendante, with Mediapart being inspired to emulate The Manchester Guardian (which has been operated by a trust since 1936): https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/le-monde-appartient-desormais-a-un-fonds-de-dotation-2090655 https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/le-monde-appartie...

baby 1y ago

There is some of that, but most often the contrarian news is commissioned and paid for, and if it succeeds then you get organic growth

greatgib 1y ago

It's hard to imagine but they are not contrarian fueled articles. It's not the usual thing, here are only interviews of their closed one with their verbatim highlighted. Words of support from public figures. The day before going to jail he was received at the current president office (like the french Whitehouse) the day after, the "justice minister" went to see him in jail to give him his support. You have editorial like "Sarkozy stays honorable and magnificent despite an illegal non proof based sentence" "His wife so sad that this hero of the nation that did so much, proud father, beloved by his friends, will have to live this hard experience" All days long. A few examples just to give one newspaper: https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980589938941874341 https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980589938941874341 Or "Sarkozy in jail, the fault of the justice!" https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980567283157139926 https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980567283157139926 And we now all know well what book "he will bring" to show how honorable is this man: "The count of Monte Cristo", "life of Jesus Christ", ...

mk89 1y ago

It's not always to gain views, because you can often see that the relative directors/presidents of such media companies openly support certain types of people. The way I see it, especially lately in Germany, is really about elections and politics. Even a stupid article can lead to "i will vote for xyz" in no time. I would agree with you if media didn't have a direction, but in many cases they do.