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For @CJR today, I jump off @benyt's Macron interview to outline some more context around the laïcité debate, and to link it to the other big free-speech issue in France atm: a bill criminalizing images identifying police officers (with malign intent). /1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/business/media/macron-france-terrorism-american-islam.html
As @dovalfon put it to @jameskmcauley, Macron "presents himself as the champion of press freedom in the Muslim world," but at home "allows his ministers to propose laws that resemble those of the countries he’s just criticized." /2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/press-freedom-violations-france/2020/11/19/c615b77c-2a6a-11eb-9c21-3cc501d0981f_story.html
During a protest against the bill last week, the reporter @TangiKermarrec was arrested and told that he should have told the authorities he planned to cover it. And on Monday, a cop attacked @RemyBuisine while he covered police clearing a migrant camp. /3 https://twitter.com/Nicomay/status/1330991518765735937
Macron told Smith that reporters should feel free to call his team. @onishinyt and @ConstantMeheut tried—to find out why the govt detained 10-year-olds on suspicion of "defending terrorism." But ministers wouldn't talk, calling the NYT "biased." /4 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/world/europe/france-extremism-children.html?referringSource=articleShare
Macron also told Smith that American media has tried to impose its values on another country’s society. Good foreign correspondents and columnists (including some that Macron's allies have attacked) do, of course, understand cultural differences and try to communicate them. /5
But it’s a foreign correspondent’s job, too, to illustrate the blind spots in other countries’ myths of national exceptionalism. Some truths—racism, police brutality, the targeting of journalists for doing their job, hypocrisy—are universal. Me for @CJR: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/emmanuel_macron_france_press_freedom_security_bill.php
(ICYMI @benyt you were described on French radio as "a superstar and iconoclast who doesn't hesitate to shoot on his own team" ... and since your article was unflattering, "perhaps Emmanuel Macron didn’t really know who he was talking to.") https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/l-edito-m/l-edito-m-17-novembre-2020
