If this is true — a report that “France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence” — then the French lawmakers have well and fully lost all grip on reality.
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on Mar 6th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Sigh. It’s the journosphere which has lost all grip on reality.
Dan, does the entanglement of being a media A-lister sadly prevent you from saying something like “This just can’t be true”? Or even, “I’m extremely skeptical, this doesn’t sound like it could be right?”. Not “If this is true …”.
C’mon. This has to be another WOLF! WOLF! WOLF! story, that the journosphere tells itself all the time, with the demagogues exploiting the paranoid in mutual self-importance.
Isn’t just a little checking in order for something so juicy?
http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20070306/105141#c579
Wait a minute! by pvdg on Mar 6th, 2007 @ 4:45pm
I am a french journalist and everything I know on this topic contradict the story up there.
Here is the agenda of our Conseil constitutionnel (aka Supreme Court):
http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/divers/actu.htm
I find nothing related to this topic. Looks like they didn’t examine this law yet.
To my knowledge, the law in question is an attempt to stop an ugly phenomenon: “happy slapping”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping
Not a good idea?
But of course, they had to differenciate the filming of a violent act “for the fun” and “in order to get a proof”. Not easy…
So they included a sentence saying this law will not apply…
« lorsque l’enregistrement ou la diffusion résulte de l’exercice normal d’une profession ayant pour objet d’informer le public ou est réalisé afin de servir de preuve en justice »
that is: “when the recording or the diffusion results from the normal exercise of a profession devoted to inform the public or is carried out in order to be used as proof in justice”
Sounds bad? This is all I know for now.
on Mar 7th, 2007 at 4:26 am
What’s so difficult to grasp about “If this is true” —
You take as apparent gospel the pseudonymous posting of an alleged French journalist, BTW.
on Mar 7th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I grasp it – the problem is that it implies it could be true. Do you really think France seriously outlawed photographing violence by other than professional journalists? Seriously? Not somebody wrote a law that if a sensationalist squints at it very hard, they can send out a press release. But that French lawmakers may “have well and fully lost all grip on reality.”
Frankly, yes, I take an explanation which makes sense by an unknown commenter over wild claims echoed in the media. It is inductive reasoning that might be flawed, and does depend on the worldview, but seems more likely to yield the correct answer.
If people with big platforms can echo the claim, why can’t I echo the counter-claim?
Also, the guy who started the story responded to one of the comments, and going over to that site confirmed the commentor was accurately describing the issue http://www.odebi.org/
on Mar 7th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
50. The law is published by pvdg on Mar 7th, 2007 @ 4:33am
This morning, the law discussed here has been published in our
“Journal officiel”:
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=INTX0600091L
In fact it’s a big package, in which you find a little thing modifying
an existing law about different kinds of violence (including rape,
torture…). Here it is:
[french omitted]
It says:
1/ that whoever knowingly records images of a violence is an
accomplice and will be punished as such.
2/ that whoever broadcast this record will be punished (5 years,
75,000 €)
3/ as I said earlier, this law does not apply when the recording or
the diffusion results from the normal exercise of a profession devoted
to inform the public or is carried out in order to be used as proof in
justice.
So, may be this law could have been better conceived. It is evident
hat the basic idea is to tell the bad guys: “if you are going to rape
a poor girl in order to take picturees or a video and show them to
other bad guys, the rapists and their accomplices, INCLUDING the
photographer could go to jail. He will say: “I didn’t touch her” and
the judge will anwer: “but you took pictures”.
Whoever, passing by, takes pictures “in order to be used as proof in
justice” will be considered as a responsible citizen.
Whoever, passing by, takes pictures in “the normal exercise of a
profession devoted to inform the public”, will be considered as a
journalist.
Oh, and what about the netizen who takes pictures of a rape and put
them on YouTube? I don’t see that there is a “right” to broadcast that
kind of humiliating images of people.
Oh, and what about Rodney King? I thought, BTW, that this happened in LA.
And alerting the public about violence perpetrated by cops is definitely
another story. And our law says exactly that recording and publishing is
OK when it is “in order to be used as proof in justice”. Which is what
happened in this case. AND: how could George Holliday, who filmed the
scene, be considered an “acomplice” of the perpetrators of the violence?
About the “Conseil constitutionnel”: what I understand now is that our
“supreme court” in fact examined the whole package on March 3, but whas
never asked to look at this particular part of it. And this juridiction
is not supposed to decide by itself to examine every bit of the law.
One last word: we have a lot of political parties and organisations of
all sizes. I didn’t heard a word about this law from any of them. The
exception is Odebi, a small group defending “Internet et Libertés /
Presse Libre d’Origine Non Kontrolée” (“Free press from uncontroled
origin”), which answered a couple of US journalists. In my opinion,
they fooled these journalists by not telling them about the other
provision of the law about filming “in order to be used as proof in
justice” and abusively using the exemple of Rodney King. To my
knowledge, George Holliday was not an amateur journalist who filmes
the scene to make a good post on his blog or upload it to YouTube. He
was acting as a full fledged citizen who is in position to record a
proof of a crime and does it. They don’t say what other idea they have
to curb the “happy slapping” epidemy.
on Mar 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Reporters Without Borders, a credible organization, doesn’t share your sanguine view of this:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=21237
on Mar 7th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Are we agreed that, contrary to the headline of the post, “Citizen Reporters” are specifically exempted in the law? That is, the law is attempting to avoid affecting reporting (as “proof of justice”) done by anyone, not ban it – which is the core of the sensationalism.
The story is now down to arguing that if the law is parsed in a certain way, it might possibly conceivably potentially be broader than intended – but note none of the people arguing that viewpoint have much experience in interpreting the nuances of the law. Modulo my derision, are we agreed there also?
My view here is not in favor of the law – it’s that it is NOT a ban on “citizen journalism”, it’s in fact the opposite, and it’s being portrayed that way in order to rile up the crowds.
on Mar 8th, 2007 at 4:15 am
Interesting blog entry on Global Voices Online about the issue of the ban:
March of the censors: France, Turkey and China clamp down on freedom of speech
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/03/07/march-of-the-censors-france-turkey-and-china-clamp-down-on-freedom-of-speech/
on Mar 8th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Seth, no we don’t agree on this. There’s still enough ambiguity to worry me.
on Mar 8th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Dan, simple question – has ANY JOURNALIST – *any* *one* – in this too-good-to-check-too-good-to-let-go hypefest, asked some organization which might know about the topic *and* does not have an incentive to cry WOLFFFFFF!? Remember, the magic Internet is supposed to give us access to anything (but nobody will hear it …).
This isn’t about bloggers, it’s about journalists, but doesn’t this tell you scary things about what the New Era of *glorying* partisanness and attention-mongering, is likely to produce?
on Mar 8th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
The BBC had a story on it. Do they qualify? Their piece didn’t clarify matters for me, either, unfortunately.
I think it’s still an open issue.
on Mar 8th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
You mean this one?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6426235.stm
Did they do: “… has ANY JOURNALIST – *any* *one* – in this too-good-to-check-too-good-to-let-go hypefest, asked some organization which might know about the topic *and* does not have an incentive to cry WOLFFFFFF!?”
I don’t see it in that story.
Citing source N which has echoed source N-1, which echoed source N-2 … _ad infinitum_ should obviously not be useful.
Again, this seems to be one guy who yelled WOLF!, and a bunch of other people who wanted to play the crowd started up the cry of WOLF! WOLF! WOLF!, and it seems have gone on from there.
The important thing is that there’s no reason for anybody in the chain to fact-check and debunk – I keep hammering this, that the incentive is to rile-’em-up, not to engage in any sort of skepticism.