Several French news organizations, including Le Monde, BFM-TV, La Croix, Europe 1, and France 24, are changing their policies relating to the broadcast and publishing of terrorist names and photographs. Le Monde's director argued that publishing the information amounted to "posthumous glorification":
Several French news organisations have said they will no longer publish photographs of people responsible for terrorist killings, to avoid bestowing "posthumous glorification".
Le Monde published an editorial after the latest attack, the murder of an elderly priest in a church near Rouen by two men claiming allegiance to Islamic State. Under the headline "Resisting the strategy of hate", Le Monde argued on Wednesday that all elements of society had to be involved in the struggle against terrorism, and that media organisations had a special role to play.
"The sites and newspapers that produce this information cannot excuse themselves from self-examination on several fronts. Since Isis terrorism first appeared, Le Monde has changed its practices several times," the newspaper said.
It first chose not to republish images from Isis propaganda documents. Then, after the attack in Nice on 14 July, when a truck drove through crowds enjoying the Bastille Day public holiday, Le Monde said it had decided to "no longer publish photographs of the perpetrators of killings, to avoid the potential effect of posthumous glorification".
France Télévisions [sic] resisted following suit, with the executive director of news saying, "we must resist this race towards self-censorship and grand declarations of intention."
There have been similar calls in the U.S. to pressure media organizations to self-censor the names and photographs of mass killers, culminating in the formation of a campaign called No Notoriety, founded by the parents of one of the victims of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting.
Related: Wipe the Names of Mass Killers Off the Internet
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday July 29 2016, @05:00PM
It's not "censorship".
It's refusing to do the job of the terrorists.
ISIS is just a bunch of loonies on pickup trucks, who are incapable of taking a town 30km from their "capital" because it's not filled with Sunni.
But they are really really good at propaganda, and using the media and the internet, to recruit weak no-life boys who have a sense of oppression from the European country where they've lived their entire life in a dead-end crumbling neighborhood.
Join ISIS, you'll be someone! The Presidents of the world will talk about your deeds and repeat your name! The 24/7 channels will show your pictures in a loop that will only be broken when another ISIS member kills more than you! Even if we don't know you, and you just feel like killing your asshole boss, go gruesome and pledge for us, and you'll teach his family a lesson!
I've been saying that for a few years now. The West is stupid. We empower the middle-east rednecks (apologies to the working rednecks) to kick us.
We need to stop talking about their "conquests", stop reporting every fucking time one of them threatens anything, cut off their phones and Internet access, threaten google and the other Internet providers who provide platforms for propaganda (they're immune because they half-ass suppressing videos after they're told, which is too late. their algorithms could do a lot of pre-sorting).
Refusing to transmit the enemy's propaganda is not censorship.
Censorship would be avoiding talking about the people who die here or there, or why. The innocent should be named. Our fallen sons and daughters can be named. We don't need to name the other side's soldiers, or use our tax-funded infrastructure to let them recruit.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @06:08PM
It is censorship. Specifically, self-censorship. This term has existed for a while now; get over it.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 29 2016, @06:30PM
Under the broadest definition of self-censorship, it might be.
Otherwise, it's called journalism: sorting information based on the actual value to the target, rather than ratings.
Haven't seen much of that on most media outlets recently.