Sarkozy won because he controls the media
During a campaign, most french people get their information from television, and Sarkozy has total control on TV and the press media in France. It is impossible for the socialists to regain power in France as long as media is controlled by huge companies that are the friends of the right wing politicians.
The only solution for France and for many other countries that have political immobillism and a right wing ultra-capitalistic agenda, is to build a new form of media and democracy using the Internet. Currently the Internet has some forums, blogs, video systems, content managment systems that permits some interesting fenomenons. But still the barrier to entry is too low to affect elections.
Ségolène Royal did the absolute best online campaign in the world at http://desirsdavenir.org, using the Internet to promote better democracy in France, using the Internet to broadcast video messages to millions of viewers. Ségolène Royal’s Internet campaign beat all the world records in terms of use of of the Web. But the use of the Web needs to go much further that that, and reach into the living room of a majority of the citizen before it can really affect election results.
I believe the french socialists should invest the little money and ambition required to try and really revolutionnize the media, and providing an alternative decentralized access to information to a majority of citizens. This is the only way that reasonable politics will be able to regain the power in states where a monopolizing right-wing owned media has a monopoly on all the way small political tricks are performed to force the public opinion on the side of corrupted right-wing politicians. The revolution in media and information in a much more profound way is required for democracy to become just and effective to change things for the best for most people.
Do you mind providing all of us with some proof that Sarkozy had the control of the media?
Comment by Grigolez — May 31, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
Well basically just check who owns the big french media outlets, be it TF1, Canal+, the biggest newspapers, magasines, and check who own the 4 major polling institutes. Those are all owned by Lagardère, Bouygues, Dassault and Pinnault. Those people are France biggest fortunes and their stocks on the CAC40 have provided them with 1500% more earnings while cutting salaries and jobs since Sarkozy is a member of the government in 2002. Also those media giants have arms contracts with the state, nuclear plants, telecoms, they control Airbus and they pump the oil using Total.
I don’t say that journalists necessarilly are corrupted in their journalism work on those media outlets, I say that the top journalists on those media outlets are carefully picked by the medias managment. And they are picked to be with right wing opinions, cause no journalist is really neutral. And when you got so many journalists with strong right wing viewpoints, you can carefully make sure that the whole opinion in the media stays in Sarkozy’s favour. The big french media couldn’t take any chances since Ségolène Royal’s politics also was about redefining the whole importance of the established media.
Comment by Charbax — June 3, 2007 @ 3:23 pm