GLOBAL: Journalists 'are colourless and blinded by power', says new French film

Friday, January 13, 2012

Item: 7794

PARIS (L'Express / Pacific Media Watch): A new documentary film in France has launched a devastating attack on the media industry and the anti-democratic nature of contemporary corporate news oligarchs and tame journalists.

Even the remnants of the Hersant media empire in the South Pacific have been criticised in the film, The New Watchdogs (Les Nouveau Chiens de Garde), by co-directors Yannick Kergoat and Gilles Balbastre.

In a "pamphleting" documentary, the filmmakers have exposed the "suspect mechanism" of the media, writes Thomas Baurez in the the latest edition of L'Express in Paris.

Concluding the review, Baurez comments about the documentary's message: "It is necessary to break up the deregulation of media, the logic of concentrated ownership, the commodification of information and the commercialisation of press businesses. The media certainly cannot self-regulate, political decisions are needed.

"The sole objective of this film finally to redefine the question of the media as a political one. Twenty years ago when Robert Hersant [owner of Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes in New Caledonia and La Dépêche de Tahiti] was buying up the media, people were protesting in the streets. It was a real stake for society. Today, it all appears normal ... "

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Full text of the film review [in French].