Journalist is fired for attack on French war coverage

By Henry Samuel in Paris
(Filed: 01/01/2004)

A French journalist fired for accusing the country's
press of blinkered anti-Americanism during the Iraq war
said yesterday he had realised the extent of French
bias by reading The Telegraph.

In his book, La Guerre a Outrances - Comment la presse
nous a desinform? sur l'Irak (The War of Outrages - How
the press disinformed us on Iraq), M Hertoghe attacked
French reporters for continually predicting that the
war would end in disaster for American and British forces.

French journalists were "dreaming of an American
defeat", he wrote and from the earliest days of the war
predicted a "new Vietnam" or "Saddamgrad" after every
American casualty.

He said he realised that this pessimistic view was
inaccurate by reading accounts from journalists
embedded with coalition forces.

But his biggest influence was the columns written by
The Daily Telegraph's Defence Editor, Sir John Keegan,
whom he quotes dozens of times in the book's 200 pages.

"When you read [Sir John's] columns, you get the
impression that he is describing a completely different
war than the one unfolding in the French press," he
said. "History has shown that his was the correct analysis."

For instance, on March 25, less than a week after the
start of the allied offensive, while most French papers
were giving warning of a "military quagmire", Sir John
remarked that the coalition advance of 300 miles in
four days was "one of the fastest advances ever
achieved, surpassing that of the British liberation
army in the dash from the Seine to Brussels in 1944".

M Hertoghe said: "French readers simply cannot
understand how British and American forces won the war
so fast."

In the book, M Hertoghe, 44, a Belgian, examined
articles and editorials from his own paper, La Croix,
as well as the conservative Le Figaro, centre-Left Le
Monde, Left-wing Liberation and the regional paper Ouest-France.

He charges all of them with "collective misdemeanours"
resulting from a mixture of journalistic and French arrogance.

M Hertoghe, the former assistant editor of La Croix's
online edition, said the reasons for this failure were threefold.

He argued that, because three quarters of reports on
Iraq were written from Paris, journalists were
influenced by the national anti-American mood and above
all hatred of President George W Bush.

Second, President Jacques Chirac's intransigence,
coupled with the panache of his foreign minister,
Dominique de Villepin, produced a collective sense that
France had recovered its position as an international heavyweight.

Third, journalists were swayed by a misguided
fraternity with any Arab state or regime that opposed
Mr Bush or Tony Blair. "They knew Saddam was a bad man,
but at least he would teach the Americans a lesson,"
said M Hertoghe.

"Reading French dailies, you are under the impression
that America, apart from a handful of admirable
pacifists, is full of unpleasant brainless, selfish and
violent 'patriots'," he wrote. Some editorials even put
Mr Bush on a par with Saddam.

M Hertoghe was fired on Dec 15 for a "loss of
confidence" following the book's release. He said he
received a letter from La Croix listing four points,
including damaging the newspaper's reputation. He told
The Telegraph yesterday that he was considering legal
action for wrongful dismissal.

Despite rave reviews in Belgium, the book hardly raised
an eyebrow in France.

Daniel Schneidermann, recently fired by Le Monde for
criticising the paper's management, lamented the lack
of debate over the book.

In a column in Liberation, he described the French
national press as being "in crisis" over its ability to
honestly inform the public.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

Journalist is fired for attack on French war coverage

By Henry Samuel in Paris
(Filed: 01/01/2004)

A French journalist fired for accusing the country's
press of blinkered anti-Americanism during the Iraq war
said yesterday he had realised the extent of French
bias by reading The Telegraph.

In his book, La Guerre a Outrances - Comment la presse
nous a desinformŽ sur l'Irak (The War of Outrages - How
the press disinformed us on Iraq), M Hertoghe attacked
French reporters for continually predicting that the
war would end in disaster for American and British forces.

French journalists were "dreaming of an American
defeat", he wrote and from the earliest days of the war
predicted a "new Vietnam" or "Saddamgrad" after every
American casualty.

He said he realised that this pessimistic view was
inaccurate by reading accounts from journalists
embedded with coalition forces.

But his biggest influence was the columns written by
The Daily Telegraph's Defence Editor, Sir John Keegan,
whom he quotes dozens of times in the book's 200 pages.

"When you read [Sir John's] columns, you get the
impression that he is describing a completely different
war than the one unfolding in the French press," he
said. "History has shown that his was the correct analysis."

For instance, on March 25, less than a week after the
start of the allied offensive, while most French papers
were giving warning of a "military quagmire", Sir John
remarked that the coalition advance of 300 miles in
four days was "one of the fastest advances ever
achieved, surpassing that of the British liberation
army in the dash from the Seine to Brussels in 1944".

M Hertoghe said: "French readers simply cannot
understand how British and American forces won the war
so fast."

In the book, M Hertoghe, 44, a Belgian, examined
articles and editorials from his own paper, La Croix,
as well as the conservative Le Figaro, centre-Left Le
Monde, Left-wing Liberation and the regional paper Ouest-France.

He charges all of them with "collective misdemeanours"
resulting from a mixture of journalistic and French arrogance.

M Hertoghe, the former assistant editor of La Croix's
online edition, said the reasons for this failure were threefold.

He argued that, because three quarters of reports on
Iraq were written from Paris, journalists were
influenced by the national anti-American mood and above
all hatred of President George W Bush.

Second, President Jacques Chirac's intransigence,
coupled with the panache of his foreign minister,
Dominique de Villepin, produced a collective sense that
France had recovered its position as an international heavyweight.

Third, journalists were swayed by a misguided
fraternity with any Arab state or regime that opposed
Mr Bush or Tony Blair. "They knew Saddam was a bad man,
but at least he would teach the Americans a lesson,"
said M Hertoghe.

"Reading French dailies, you are under the impression
that America, apart from a handful of admirable
pacifists, is full of unpleasant brainless, selfish and
violent 'patriots'," he wrote. Some editorials even put
Mr Bush on a par with Saddam.

M Hertoghe was fired on Dec 15 for a "loss of
confidence" following the book's release. He said he
received a letter from La Croix listing four points,
including damaging the newspaper's reputation. He told
The Telegraph yesterday that he was considering legal
action for wrongful dismissal.

Despite rave reviews in Belgium, the book hardly raised
an eyebrow in France.

Daniel Schneidermann, recently fired by Le Monde for
criticising the paper's management, lamented the lack
of debate over the book.

In a column in Liberation, he described the French
national press as being "in crisis" over its ability to
honestly inform the public.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
--

As Orwell pointed out long ago, pacifism in the face of
armed evil is equivalent to a blind worship of force.
It would be disastrous to entrust our children's fate
to the hands of these sad and complicitous pacifists.