(Credit: Popperipopp via Wikimedia)
Several French media outlets won’t show photos of terrorists after the latest terror attacks in France. French newspaper Le Monde will no longer show photos of terrorists, the paper’s director Jerome Fenoglio announced. BFM-TV, Europe 1 Radio, and La Croix news site and newspaper all made similar promises.
In a July 27 editorial, Fenoglio responded to the latest attacks in France — the late July murder of a priest in Normandy and the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice.
“In this case, why us?” Fenoglio wrote according to a Google Translate. “Again, the answer is in the jihadi propaganda. This is the second truth that we must keep in mind. France is attacked because it includes one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe. The goal of the jihadists is to cause the shares of savage reprisals which we will install in a religious civil war so.”
Because of ISIS terrorism, Fenoglio wrote that “Le Monde has repeatedly changed its practices.”
For example, Fenoglio said the newspaper won’t publish pictures of propaganda documents from ISIS. “Following the Nice attack, we will publish no more killings of authors of the photographs, to avoid possible posthumous glorification effects. Other debates about our practices are ongoing,” he added.
Fenoglio told the French wire service Agence France Presse, “We realised after the Nice attack that we were very uncomfortable about a series of photos from the attacker’s past.”
Fenoglio said, “It is not about hiding the facts, or where these killers came from, which is why we do not agree with not naming them. But their photos are not pertinent for describing their background.”
In a separate news story, Le Monde reported that similarly French TV news BFM-TV and Europe 1, the radio and news site, would no longer air photos of terrorist attackers. BFM TV’s Herve Beroud told the AFP, “We made the decision last night to no longer show pictures of the terrorists until further notice.”
Likewise Catholic site La Croix’s editor Francois Ernenwein told the AFP it won’t publish terrorists’ photos or last names. Ernenwein told iMediaEthics by e-mail that it won’t publish photos of last names of any terrorists, not just those in France or those who attack churches.
iMediaEthics has tweeted Le Monde‘s Fenoglio and BFM-TV’s Beroud for more information.
Hat Tip: Press Gazette
I am glad to see this, now if we could get TV to quit showing hours and hours of coverage of these events. By spending hour upon hours showing the same footage a million times with no new information is just free propaganda for them. If there are updates then break the news, but American TV stations seem to think that they need to cover these attacks for sometimes for over 24 hours straight and cover nothing else. Please quit giving these terrorists what they want, free publicity. Cover the story with what you have then come back to it if something really new comes up, stop showing the same 1 minute clips over and over again for hours on end. It is impossible to get much other news on TV here after these attacks.
This is the problem with 24 hour news networks, even now local channels follow suit. If it snows an inch in Portland Oregon, the local news comes on, cancelling any other shows, so they can talk endlessly for hours about the snow falling as soon as it starts, it used to be closures etc were crawls below whatever show is on, now it is the show. I like the ability to know what is happening now, but these incidents make me long for the day when it took a day to get the information to us and it was a story and done unless new important information came up.
This coverage does nothing but entice others to do the same so that they have a “claim to fame” no matter the cost. Covering this violence for hours on end spawns more of the same.