Despite a Near Unanimous Traditional Media Urging Oui, the French Voted A Big Non to the European Constitution Proving Print and Broadcast Are Not As Powerful As They Think They Are. Or, Put Another Way – The Internet Rules the Information Age.

Philip Stone May 30, 2005

The traditional French media should hang its head in shame for its coverage these past few weeks of the European Union Constitution referendum. What we saw in France was a one-sided media blitz in favor of the Constitution that one would have expected from a third world country run by a tyrant trying to show elections are fair and free. It was not what one expects from one of the world’s great democracies.

And yet the French public saw through it all, relied on the Internet for much of its information, and for various reasons not least being their unhappiness with various French government policies, voted down the referendum. Democracy won after all.

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The stakes, admittedly, were very high. President Jacques Chirac himself called the referendum seeking French approval for a new EU Constitution to handle what is now an unwieldy 25-nation group. In what the pundits now call an unnecessary risk, Chirac thought he was holding a royal flush in his hands because he had persuaded EU leaders to appoint former French President Valeri Giscard D’Estang to head the group that wrote the document that pandered to French national interests.

The No vote has surely scuttled Chirac’s reported plans to run for a third Presidential term in 2007. And, almost forgot, a No vote in France means the Constitution is dead for a while because all 25 countries must ratify it for it to become law, and renegotiation or perhaps another vote, at least in the short-term, seems unlikely. It just doesn’t get any bigger than all of that.

So it came as a rather nasty shock to the government  that no sooner had the unofficial referendum campaign begun that the No side took a rather considerable lead, and the Yes side, no matter what it tried including getting Chirac on television several times for interviews and speeches to the nation urging a yes vote – his last speech to the nation coming just one day before all official campaigning must stop according to law – it just wasn’t enough.

And the Yes side had all the media weapons, except the Internet and posters, at its almost exclusive disposal.  But when the final analysis is complete it may very well show that was not enough because by far the most powerful and influential media of all is now the Internet. There, everyone has an even shot at getting a message across, and it is there the No vote campaign was especially prolific.

There was barely a French newspaper or magazine except those on the very far right or left – strange bedfellows for this referendum -- that raised its voice in opposition to approving the Constitution. To a point that is understandable – most French newspapers are recognized for their political leanings and in this case the government and the main opposition socialists were united in urging yes.  But rogue politicians from those parties who urged a no vote seldom saw the light of day in those newspapers to express their opinions 

And with ownership of several French national newspapers now under the control of rich industrialists – Serge Dassault, for instance, owner of Le Figaro is a close Chirac confidant – one would have to look mostly beyond the printed word to find No support, although Le Monde, to its credit, has allowed space for both sides although it took a Yes editorial stand.

And without wanting to cast aspersions, it should not be forgotten that the French newspaper industry is still in a terrible financial mess, and relies very heavily on the various subsidies the government provides each year, said to be budgeted this year at some €278 million. Do you bite the hand that feeds you on such an important issue?

One would like to think that French journalistic standards are higher than that, and it is said that journalists at Le Figaro did draw a line in the sand for when it thought management was going to far, but for managements relying on subsidies given at the pleasure of the Parliamentary majority then the proprietary of subsidies comes into question when such bias is forthright.

On television, where two of the top three rated terrestrial stations are run by the state, it wasn’t much better. In fact, in the early days of the campaign a group of broadcast journalists, sickened by the Yes bias over the airwaves, started an online petition to urge even coverage. They handed in that petition, signed by more than 15,000 people, to the powers that be.

They were told in return that “official” statistics showed that in Q1, 2005, the coverage was indeed biased – some 71% of airtime on the issue was given to the yes side with only 29% to the No side.  But once management had that information they said they started to correct the flow and they claimed that for the six weeks between April 4 and May 13 the bias was reduced to 57% Yes to 43% No.

Once the official campaign began May 14 advertising time was given to the political parties proportioned to the percentage of vote they received in the last general election. That meant the bulk of advertising went for Yes.

Even direct mail was used to the government’s advantage. Every French household received a complete copy of the EU Constitution written in a very small type. Accompanying it was what we might call the “executive summary” written in larger type and which the No side says was heavily biased towards voting Yes. Would a household read the whole EU text to make up its mind or just the summary?

But for all that sometimes reality and perception don’t match. Two polls taken by respected organizations showed that about half the French people believe media coverage was even-handed, and in one of the polls, if anything they thought the coverage favored the No side!

So, could posters and the Internet be deciding factors? In true democratic election fashion both sides sent out teams every night to splash any available wall with posters urging Yes or No. And in true democratic fashion, if the No side found posters urging Yes the Yes got covered with No posters, and vice-versa. Basically all good clean election sport and it is going to take municipal workers throughout the country weeks to get those posters cleaned off.

But the Internet appears to be the real player here that the Yes side just could not tame, and probably underestimating the Internet’s power may have been the government’s biggest mistake. Out of a population of some 60 million about 24 million French access the Internet.

Even the mainstream newspapers showed more even-handedness online in giving both sides of the debate than they did in print. They took the space to explain each of the treaty’s 448 articles, and had viewpoints from politicians representing both sides. The No side, feeling shutout from the mainstream media, countered on the Internet with a large number of sites urging No, completely outweighing the Yes side output.  And when, for instance, a law professor published a pamphlet against the treaty the full text found its way onto the Internet in next to no time and became an instant online hit.

The Yes side countered by producing more sites advocating their viewpoint, but they were always in the minority and it could well be argued that it was on the Internet where true French democracy ran true.

This all has very important consequences for the traditional media, not just in France but elsewhere. The Internet has come into its own not only as a place where information is found but also a place where people will go to discover that information and trust what they read.

If the mainstream public is turning to the Internet, and seemingly not paying much attention to what they read and see in the traditional media then the obvious question must be: Why?

Could it just be that people are not stupid – they understand the media has its biases, and they accept that as a way of life.  But no longer are they restricted to the traditional media being their sole source of information.

There is a whole new Internet information system out there, and the ramifications of that, as the French referendum result has shown, can only be positive for democracy. Given many choices of information, people in democracies seem to have the knack of filtering out the bias and concentrating on the facts they want to know.

And for those who are used to influencing what the media says, knowing it will usually swing things their way, there is now the realization that there’s a whole new information world out there. The big question for the politicians today is just how do you go about influencing all of that?

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