French Media To Stop Using Names, Photos Of Terrorists
By Dreamer
In the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper resisted showing a photo of the shooter, or saying his name. Instead, he opted to read the names and biographies of each of the people killed in the tragedy, and showed their photos instead.
“There is one name I want to tell you that you will not hear in this broadcast tonight,” Cooper began, reports People. “One picture of a person you will not see. We will not say the gunman’s name or show his photograph. It’s been shown far too much all ready. We want to try to keep the focus where we think it belongs – on the people whose lives were cut short.”
In the wake of their own mass killings – most recently during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice – French news organizations are following suit.
According to The Guardian, French news media will no longer publish the names or photos of terrorists involved in attacks – a way to avoid “posthumous glorification”.
When a French priest was murdered by self-proclaimed Islamic terrorists on July 26, leading French paper Le Monde published a piece titled “Resisting the strategy of hate”, in which the paper re-inspected its (and other news outlets’) role in society.
“The sites and newspapers that produce this information cannot excuse themselves from self-examination on several fronts,” the Le Monde article read, reports The Guardian. “Since Isis terrorism first appeared, Le Monde has changed its practices several times”.
BFM-TV, a major news station in France, has opted for the same course of action, along with La Croix, a Catholic press.
“We made the decision last night to no longer show pictures of the terrorists until further notice,” Hervé Béroud told Agence France Presse, an international newswire service, reports The Guardian. “We have been thinking about this for some time. Our decision was speeded up by Nice, by the repeated tragedies.”
Meanwhile, major papers news outlets such as Le Figaro and Nouvel Observatuer will continue to publish names and photos of terrorists, and Libération has announced it will decide on a case-by-case basis.
But Fethi Benslama, a psychoanalyst who teaches at Paris Diderot University, made a plea to stop by glorification once and for all.
“Perhaps it is time that there was a pact in the media to no longer publish the names and pictures of the perpetrators of these acts, as it’s a really big boost to their efforts to make themselves world famous, even while their victims are anonymous and will remain anonymous.”
Sources: The Guardian, People / Photo Credit: John Henderson / Flickr
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