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“The Mélenchon Press Agency? »: AFP criticized for its handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict (photo taken on October 19 in Sderot, Israel).
POLITICS – The weight of words. Agence France Presse (AFP) is criticized by several political leaders, both from the right and from the presidential camp, for certain editorial decisions, particularly vocabulary, in its treatment of the Middle East conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Allegations that emerge after the Hebrew State army’s bombings in the Gaza Strip intensified on Friday, October 27, in retaliation for Hamas attacks on October 7.
A new event that AFP relayed in this sense through the social network of the Palestinian movement Hamas, cut off from the world due to the shutdown of telecommunications and the Internet. A sentence (among 7 messages) that leads to several criticisms… and pushes the media to explain itself.
When a Horizons MP threatens to withdraw “subsidies”.
For the Senator from Les Républicains, Stéphane Le Rudulier, the press agency should have classified Hamas as a “terrorist” organization and not simply a “Palestinian movement”. “Dare to describe reality.” “Your trivialization of terrorism is despicable and dangerous,” criticizes the elected official from Bouches-du-Rhône on the same platform.
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Among the outraged reactions was that of Renaissance MP Anne-Laurence Petel, who asked AFP on social networks whether it wasn’t more like “Agence Mélenchon Presse”. A way to compare the words of the prestigious media, the third world press agency and the first French-speaking one, with those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the rebels, who were criticized for not classifying Hamas as a terrorist organization.
And the elected official from Bouches-du-Rhône continued, still in the interests of the AFP: “Why consider barbarians to be resistance fighters?” And massacres of Jews for a conventional war? Why “forget” the beheaded babies and hostages in Gaza? »
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An unreserved criticism that we also find at the National Assembly, where MP Julien Odoul wonders whether “this press organ, generously financed by our taxes, would have qualified the Waffen-SS as a German movement in 1945?” » “A disgrace for the left-wing office, that deliberately spared the Islamist terrorists of Hamas,” he added in his diatribe on social networks.
Even more insulting, Horizon MP Jérémie Patrier-Leitus even went so far as to question the “withdrawal of public subsidies” given to the agency, before retracting its social media message to tone it down somewhat.
AFP explains
In the face of this criticism, the information director of Agence France Presse, Phil Chetwynd, tells Le Figaro that he prefers the “detailed description of the facts” to justify not using the term “terrorist,” a word that, in his opinion, “defines its value lost.” Meaning.
“For example, all authoritarian governments in the world use the word to talk about their opponents. We prefer facts that we can confirm ourselves. “The detailed description of the horrific attacks in Israel is clear to the reader,” he explains in an article published by the daily on Friday.
It is also about neutrality, as the agency explained on Saturday in a “notice to customers” that was published a few hours after the criticism from the political leadership. “Consistent with its mission to report the facts without passing judgment, the AFP does not qualify any movement, group or individual as terrorist without directly attributing the use of that word or without using quotation marks,” writes Eric Wishart, the editor of Mainly responsible for the ethical and editorial principles of the agency.
He also recalls that this editorial policy has been in force for a long time and that it applies to any reporting on “politically motivated violence against civilians,” even if “our own colleagues have been brutally killed in such circumstances.” » On the other hand, says Eric Wishart, the AFP mentions in its productions the fact that Hamas is classified as a “terrorist” in particular by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Israel.
The BBC also criticized in the United Kingdom
In this context, it is interesting to note that Agence France Presse is not the only media to which such criticism refers. Across the Channel, the respected BBC was also accused by the British right of appeasing Hamas shortly after the October 7 attacks. This is for the same reasons.
“Terrorism is a loaded word that people use to refer to a group of which they morally disapprove,” said John Simpson, editor-in-chief of the public broadcaster’s international service, in remarks reported by Le Monde in mid-October. The British Defense Secretary had just criticized the media’s semantic choice, which he said was “bordering on embarrassing.”
For the English journalist, “it is not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.” We regularly point out that the British government and others are “We condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization, but that’s their business.”
Ultimately, this neutrality does not prevent the media from organizing interviews with guests and quoting contributors who describe Hamas itself as terrorists, he explained. What Eric Wishart confirms this Saturday for AFP.
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