Media Bullshit Awards

Last night I watched the ceremony to award the Bobards d'Or 2013. Not on tele, no way! It was being streamed live on the internet. Hurrah for the internet!

What's a bobard? Depending on how polite you want to be it can be a 'tall story', 'lie', 'bullshit' etc. So basically you when you say a bobard you are not telling the truth. The Bobards d'Or are awarded to French journalists. Unbelievable, no? French journalists who don't tell the truth?

Par for the course, actually, they're at it all the time. If they aren't actually lying, they are dissembling the truth, drowning it in irrelevant details, and colouring it with political correctness in order to align the public's attitudes and beliefs.

This is not unique to France, of course. Most of the  western world is suffering from an excess of stultifying attempts to readjust traditional beliefs and behaviour.

For your delectation and delight, let me tell you about the winners of the 2013 Bobards d'Or and you'll understand exactly what I'm going on about.

Bobard d’Or : Philippe Manière  (television chat show 'C dans l’air', France 3) for a professorial bobard. He explained in a peremptory manner that  « Nos flux migratoires en France sont extrêmement ténus »  (migration in France is extremely tenuous) despite the fact that about 200,000 foreigners arrive in France every year. Hardly so teeny tiny that you barely notice it.

Bobard d’Argent :  Serge Le Luyer (Ouest France, Le Monde) for a civil status bobard, or how to transform the name of a collège-age murderer from Souleyman to Vladimir. With this he also managed to kill two birds with one stone because on the one hand he managed to hide the fact that the murderer was a Muslim, and on the other he was able to allude to, and demonise that baddie Putin.

Bobard de Bronze : Jean-Jacques Bourdin (radio journalist for RMC) for a bobard 'immigrophilie'. He tried to make his listeners believe that immigration in 2012 was less than that of 1931. How did he do that?  By good old lying. He came up with a make-believe number of 5.8% of immigrants whereas the official INSEE figure is reported as 8.4%. He made out that there were twice as many Italians in 1931 as there were Algerians in 2012 whereas in fact the number was similar, and in any case, many Italians came to France temporarily and went back later to Italy.

But the fun didn't end there.

A special prix du jury, the Mouton d'Or was awarded to the media as a whole for its reporting of the terrorist acts committed by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse. The alleged killer was assumed by the media to be a white, blond, blue-eyed neo-nazi based on no evidence whatsoever. They were gutted when they discovered the actual killer was a Muslim of Algerian origin naturalised French, and so changed tack to describe him as a 'Frenchman from Toulouse, a nice boy with the face of an angel'. This is the man who gunned down in cold blood a total of seven people including three Jewish children and injured six others.

Finally, une muselière d’or (a golden muzzle) was awarded to Patrick Cohen from radio station France Inter. He replied 'non' to the question 'we have the right to think what we like?' and continued « on a le droit de penser ce qu’on veut dans les limites de la loi. » (one has the right to think what one likes within the limits of the law). Scary Orwellian stuff! A well-deserved award, that one!

The French media is a world of  concealment of certain facts, endless repetition of other facts, distortion, sanctification of 'good' demonisation of  'bad', 1984 Doublespeak and, of course, the good old bobard. Among the 'bad' is anyone who doesn't have the same opinions as the media which alone holds the keys to the nation's morality. Critical thinking of all sides of an issue has become suspended and has been replaced by political correctness. 

Thinking is confined within four pillars of containment: globalisation, anti-racism, rupture of traditions, and the criminalisation of French and European memory.

The news on French television is practically a joke these days. The funniest thing is that more and more people are turning away from watching it, and going onto the internet in search of independent news sources. The stranglehold of press barons is wavering because, poor things, they've lost the monopoly on news outlets, and pompous lecturing journalists are no longer untouchable.

The future is bright.

And to finish, to illustrate the level of journalism on French television here is a video of actress Veronique Genest being attacked for her opinions by pompous lecturing 'journalist' Aymeric Caron on a chat show where she was not told she would be subjected to a political discussion, and thus came unprepared. She suffered a violent verbal attack. It's followed by a video with Islam specialist and International Civil Liberties Alliance president Alain Wagner who supports with sources the points Veronique Genest made and thus totally ridicules and humiliates that twat Caron. I doubt he'll have learned the lessons though...