Page - 130 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Souley Hassane | Mainstream Media vs. Ethnic Minority Media 130 television service and groups of blacks. A demonstration on October 9, 2005 protested against what was seen as the perversion of the public broadcasting service’s obligations. The Internet played a decisive role in the coordination and the dissemination of information on the subject. In the end, the TV host and the director of France Television were found guilty of promoting racism, but notwithstanding, the host retained his position. This, in turn, led to more demonstrations, which did, in fact, lead to Fogiel’s resignation. With this media event, blacks made their mark on the French audiovisual landscape, so that, in contrast to earlier coverage, the opening story now regularly features blacks. This affair was soon to be eclipsed by the question of slavery, of memory and of the ‘competition among victims’ in the French media. The question of slavery became a subject of debate following media reports on Pétré- Grenouilleau’s book entitled Les traites négrières (Pétré-Grenouilleau 2002). The author speaks of an “African slave trade”, and the media set the stage for public debate by giving preeminence to this theory. Afrikara documented the indignation of the black community. A communiqué by the “Collectif Dom” (a group of people of Caribbean and African descent) reads as follows (Le Collectif DOM 2005): Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau suggests the subject of slavery should have remained mute, and not been declared a crime against humanity, in order not to be “compared with the Shoah”. He also suggests that this law is responsible for further anti-Semitism. Where does this unjustified indictment come from? In what way can the recognition of the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity be seen as anti- Semitic? Should we now renounce the qualification of other crimes against humanity such as those against the Armenians, the Yugoslavians or the Rwandans? In intellectual perversity, Pétré- Grenouilleau considers the suffering of blacks at the hands of slavery to have been less than the suffering of the Jews of the Holocaust, rightly recognized for its atrocities. Is it because slaves were supposedly objects without souls? All the while proclaiming “there is no Richter scale of suffering”, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau is author of a strange comparison which gives rise to a competition of victimization, and continues to unleash hatred between communities. Afrikara added (Afrikara 2006b): The slavery question, whether referring to memory or to history, discharges an irrepressible release and eruption of racial hatred onto the French audiovisual landscape which is far from having been expunged of colonial nostalgia and of a particularly profound form of color phobia: the commemoration of crimes perpetuated against