At where all the press and TV take up the cause of the "struggle of the Tibetan people" and against "bloody repression" of Chinese authorities, is there no place, lighting up the events of the past, to question the pronouncements western face of conflicts of recent decades, trying to understand the pressure that the media have to influence opinions? In the case of Tibet we are now witnessing a barrage of information that seems to have found a subject wearer and does not doubt regarding the responsibility of what some even call a "cultural genocide". This world of journalism seems to now work towards simplification in distributing roles: the good and therefore also that of the wicked. Just like George Bush, yet so fun, which referred to "forces of evil" to justify its war in Iraq.
When we look back on the events, it is curious that almost every time, Western media have taken a unilateral and final one for the belligerents. Whenever journalists out of their role which ought to be informed to become a sort of vigilante holders truths. And yet, often the hero, once in power, disappointing. So much so that sometimes we come to express regret. The media attitude is based on a simple principle: an evil that can not succeed well. With his experience, history would have taught that the worst is to come often.
All of Europe has supported the "just struggle of the North Vietnamese people" against the American ogre. The regime of Pol Pot Khmer had the sympathy of the entire intelligentsia French, from Sartre to Foucault, who expressed it in the newspapers of the time. All the press has vilified the Shah of Iran in applauding wildly triumphant return of Ayatollah Khomeini. All media have sided with Aristide against Duvalier and his Tontons Macoutes, emblematic of bloodthirsty killers. It even happens that, without warning, turn around the sympathy: Saddam Hussein has long played the role of the good before endorsing the devil's in 1991, early in the first Gulf War. And yet the gassing of Kurds in 1988, three years before his demonization. The turnaround was so fast that the pilots of aircraft Mirage that France had sold were still in training in our country of "human rights" when the conflict erupted. When the truth is complicated it can not be so complicated that (Pierre Bourdieu). And account for the complexity now appears above the media that simply forces, most often, a child and Manichean simplification.
The 70 are the starting point along the political support at all costs for plans that we consider just and humane compassion conveyed by the drama live on television. The American press attributes to himself the victory in its fight to end operations in Vietnam. These years coincide with the awareness of television's influence on public opinion, indirectly on the policy and hence its immense new power. It is from this period based on an opinion she has forged itself, the media sphere feels invested with a moral role of separating good from evil. From that time, and often using NGOs unwittingly, it launches global crusades for a better world, that is to say it looks like. In so doing, it grants itself, by assimilation with the countries where it acts as a co-teaching lessons comparable to that of the nineteenth century colonial diplomacy or that of the church fathers in their evangelizing missions among noble savages ..
This type of media on public opinion is through the images presented as the only possible truth. The pictures move and at the same time sign a guarantee of authenticity. How then do not resist the temptation of staging? Quickly drift becomes proven, fraud frequent. Rony Brauman writing about Biafra and his children starving: Just opened, the humanitarian testimony already met its limits in the manipulation of images distress. Let us remember the staging of the fall of Ceausescu presented as a popular uprising against the dictator live, fake graves of Timisoara. Worse, since serious consequences, the television broadcast of the testimony of the stranger who wished to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation: she told the throat drowned in tears, a massacre of 319 babies in a Kuwaiti hospital, which moved as the members of Congress, by only five votes of a majority, gave the green light to "Operation Storm desert. " The operation was directly and indirectly, nearly a million dead and hundreds of thousands wounded. Rony Brauman remark: Who was interested in the plight of Iraqi civilians for which no "corridor of peace", no "humanitarian corridor" has seemed necessary? The unknown was other than the daughter of the Ambassador of Kuwait to the United States, which had certainly great theatrical talent. We can legitimately think that global conflict would have turned out differently if the string had been careful to verify the information of the massacre of infants.
We come now to measure the chances of a humanitarian operation, not to the dismay of the population but its visibility. Read yesterday in the World Interview UN representative in Somalia: Somalia is abandoned by the international community. Question journalist: Did you find it difficult to focus attention on Somalia? Indeed, the problem arises in those terms. The relief of a humanitarian disaster is a function of its media coverage. Difficult to forget the remark of a CIO of a television channel about the same Somalia once said viewers are tired of these dramas African desperately similar to themselves over the years. The media has a clear conscience, however, not been injured to attend without flinching Rwandan genocide was between 500,000 and one million deaths, according to sources. It must be said that the conflict was wrong and as reported by Philippe Boisserie, the set of management information de France 2 was in April 1994: You make the evacuation of French and then you come home, it is not there to subjects on the blacks kill each other, anyway, that nobody cares.
But today Tibet seems interested when the problems date back to 1950. The proximity of the Olympic Games makes the suspense at its height. Boycott, not boycott surveys, position papers, media false objectivity: it means only those athletes in favor of a symbolic action in favor of "human rights" while the vast majority, more concerned with its performance remains favorable to the games without No reservations. We bring the actors on the set converts to Buddhism who praise the virtues of Tibetan monks. Before yesterday banner displayed by Tibetan exiles in Paris on the apron front girded for a television program. Yesterday at Olympia, banner brandished by three members of Reporters Without Borders from the flame. A scoop is that This morning more noise than the ceremony itself. No picture of the conflict, just shots that show nothing other than tourism, because it says, reporters are banned from China ... as they were of Gulf War but who remembers? Fatalities Tibetan fluctuating (a dozen, dozens, at least 140, according to sources), uncertain information. 
Take advantage involves a minimum understanding of the issue. Now what do we know just a revolt led, it seems, by religious claiming beyond their "spiritual leader" the Dalai Lama? What do we know a government in exile to whom the Dalai mediated promised to fade but we do not hear, or that no call? What about this holy man "discovered" at age three years, gasoline almost divine and revered as such, capable of generating a true theocracy, the political system with the scent of another era? The independence of Tibet would lead it to a religious state? What do we know about the internal problems of China, the giant state of 1.3 billion people who feared a breakdown of its regions? What do we know the fate of 1.5 million Han Chinese (for 5 million Tibetans) residing in Tibet if independence was declared? Separatists in a conflict they always right? Is it more feasible, as the former Yugoslavia tends to show, to bring together different people to live in the same state? The island of Formosa, sworn enemy, does it not just to elect a president in favor of rapprochement with China? The reality on the ground would it be more complex than the simplistic journalism would have us believe?
It is not about to deny the Chinese colonialism in Tibet but surprised that the information seems to suddenly move away and take advantage violently for an insurgency to which it sorely lacks information. Or rather to note that the proximity of the Olympics makes the subject salable and that Tibetan separatists are well aware benefit, we can not blame them. I will mention, in conclusion, a sentence of Rene Backman journalist Nouvel Observateur, a specialist in Asia and the Near East: On the approximation by simplifying, adding incompetence in handling the media has forgotten their cues and allow communication, insidiously, a substitute for information. As in Tibet, it would be good information, finally fulfills its role to aid understanding rather than to lead us, using questionable means, in emotional reactions, although carriers of hearing, but no future.
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