Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-03
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Pascale Colisson, researcher in information and communication science, IPJ, associated with the chair on diversity management and social cohesion, Université Paris Dauphine – PSL
Allusion to the fact that the “ÂHomo Sapiensdescended from monkeys”, to the “tribe chief”, to the “dominant male”: on the channel Cnews, Bally Bagayoko, the new mayor of Saint-Denis, in Seine-Saint-Denis, was the victim of racist remarks. He is calling for a large “citizen gathering” against racism and discrimination on Saturday, April 4. But beyond these recent attacks, it is essential to question the stereotypes that permeate the dominant media culture.
Statements made in certain media against newly elected Black mayors provoke selective reactions and indignation and raise questions about the responsibility of journalists in perpetuating racist stereotypes. But while some statements consciously conveyed by far-right rhetoric crystallize the debate, this should not obscure the fact that these racist biases have always been present, in a more or less conscious form, in media productions.
According to the sociologistSamuel Bouron, the far right spreads its ideas by playing on the culture of buzz and the capture of emotions, but also on journalistic constraints by subverting their norms. A strategy driven by the pursuit of audience based on the economy of attention and the overmediatization of certain events, particularly miscellaneous facts contributing to the creation of moral panics, which the British sociologistStanley Cohendefined as “a collective reaction disproportionate to cultural or personal practices that are generally minority, considered as ‘deviant’ or harmful to society.”
Stereotypes, a constant in media production
There are numerous reports, studies, and research works that show how stereotypes related to origin, skin color, religion, sometimes intersecting with place of residence, particularly suburbs, more or less consciously and consciously influence professional practices. The sociology of journalism thus shows how the actors in the profession share an identity withblurred contours, marked by very deeply rooted social representations, veryoften stereotyped, and quite unlike reality.
As early as 2000, work on therepresentation of so-called visible minoritiesOn television are made, which point to theunderestimation and disqualification of these minorities. It is moreover from 2000 that the CSA, the predecessor of Arcom, modified the specifications for public television and the contracts of private channels to require them to “take into account, in on-air representation, the diversity of origins and cultures of the national community.”
Moreover, public channels as well as private channels must submit an annual report on “the representation of minorities,” an obligation extended to radios in 2005.
Yet, thediversity barometer, published every year by the CSA and then by Arcom since 2012, indicates that, over the period 2013-2023, non-white people are represented on average at 15%, but in news/magazine/documentary programs, they appear twice as often among those with a negative attitude as among those with a neutral attitude. This negative attitude often involves activities described as marginal or illegal.
If, over this period, people perceived as Black were on average 1.5 times more frequently represented among those with a negative attitude than among those with a neutral attitude, there is a resurgence of their negative representation since, in 2023, they were 4 times more often represented among people with a negative attitude than among people with a neutral attitude.
Black people have a body, white people have a brain
The manyresearch workin the field of sport significantly show a recurrence of references to natural dispositions and an “animal” or even “wild” dimension for athletes of color, qualities of strategists, tacticians, and ethics for white athletes.
In another context, studies have highlighted the media positioning of people’s origins through the lens of gender equality.Nacira Guénif-Souilamasthus analyzed the stereotype of the “beurette” who carries an injunction to emancipation, and therefore integration, with the republican values against the supposed machismo inherent to the “Arab boy,” perceived as naturally violent and predatory and supposedly opposed to gender equality.
Media coverage of origin, immigration, and Islam often converge within the same territory, the one commonly reduced to the term “suburb,” a very reductive designation given the multiplicity of economic and social situations in these large urban areas. The “suburbs” thus concentrate a form of intersectionality of negative stereotypes. This reality is highlighted in particular by the analysis of the media coverage of the suburbs by France 2’s “20 Hours” news program conducted by the sociologistJérôme Berthautin 2013.
It begins with the editorial conference, a powerful place for prescribing editorial priorities and proper journalistic practices. It continues with the field action where the constraints on reporters encourage them to opt for shortcut methods that favor, from the information gathering phase, the mobilization, in a non-reflective and routine manner, of recurring stereotypes about “the suburbs.” This continues at the final choice stage, in the selection of sources, images retained during editing, comments, and the validation by the hierarchy.
The works ofJulie Sedelcomplete the analysis by highlighting the predominant place given to violent news items when the media cover disadvantaged suburban neighborhoods:
“The rise of a ‘miscellaneous news’ treatment of the ‘suburbs,’ which took place in the 1990s in the press, is indeed the symptom of a depoliticization insofar as the ‘social’ dimension is omitted—that is also political and conflictual—favoring a fetishism of ‘facts’ and, in particular, facts of delinquency,” she writes.
The composition of the editorial teams in question
From a qualitative point of view,I did a jobresearch on diversity in the media based on interviews with 40 young journalists working in all types of media, in order to shed light on the debate on three dimensions: 1) How not identifying with the dominant group affects the way one positions oneself in a newsroom, both personally and professionally; 2) What barriers limit people, so-called from diversity, from being fully recognized for who they are, and fully legitimate in practicing the profession of journalism; 3) What their room for maneuver is in terms of organizational transformation and information production.
These young journalists all express the experience of living as a minority:
“And as usual, I planned upon arriving to count the number of Black people in the editorial team, and I was always the only one, systematically the only one.”
Very often, the consideration of ethno-racial diversity remains an unthought: it is less a matter of a will to exclude than an absence of consideration of the raised issue:
“Of course, we are open, we are all benevolent, we are not racist at all. After the journalists, they are all white, the only Arabs are on social media, and the only Black people do the cleaning. But we’ll explain to you that it’s because we don’t have the profiles and that, anyway, since we don’t see colors, when we recruit, we don’t pay attention. Well yes, but when you don’t see colors, you only recruit white people.”
Several testimonies mention situations of racism following certain current events, particularly those related to attacks, terrorism, and Islam. An assumed identity of their sympathies or affinities is established, and a recurrent charge of activism arises whenever they attempt to propose a different media narrative.
A difference of opinion that crystallizes particularly around certain social issues seen as divisive, such as those of origin, Islam, and the veil:
“The web director (of a national television channel) comes to see us and says: ‘Ah, great show! But it would be good to show how women are submissive, how they are forced to wear the veil.’ And we explain to him that our topic was a small woman, 1.60 m tall, veiled, who takes former convicts to socially reintegrate them by having them do outreach, humanitarian aid, etc. And he makes it a bit more direct that he would like to have that topic, on submissive veiled women, which matches his imagination.”
The media choice to show a woman wearing a veil on screen is so divisive that it can generate a form of self-censorship, anticipating the presumed reactions of the hierarchy:
“For the news broadcast, I have never filmed a veiled woman. I knew, along with colleagues, that during editing, it wouldn’t be accepted. So why go film? Except if you’re doing a piece on Islam. But, for example, a piece on computer science, a veiled woman who is a teacher, you can’t go film her. They are so afraid of the TV viewer or of what they project onto the viewer, there’s something like: ‘We’re going to get 15,000 letters, there will be tweets, stuff like that, so let’s keep it simple.'”
These young journalists use their margin of maneuver, even if limited, to plant small seeds, by offering a way of handling information aimed at breaking away from the assimilation of certain people with certain subjects, which often stems from deeply ingrained stereotypes in the profession:
“For the first round of the presidential election, I gathered testimonies from voters or abstainers and there was Mrs. Martin, there was Mr. Sekou, a garbage collector in Pantin, who has had French nationality for fifteen years and for whom voting is super important, there was a woman of Maghreb origin, a young white woman. My goal is to try to reach profiles as different as possible for subjects of Mr. and Mrs. Everyone.”
We see to what extent the issue of racism and stereotypes in the media stems from multifactorial causes, which contribute to the perpetuation of a dominant model of narratives. The road ahead is still long and it begins with overcoming a form of denial, at all levels of the organization. The closing word will be from a young journalist:
“I don’t think that being from other origins or having a different history makes one a better journalist. It does allow for a different perspective, a different voice, that much is true. I’m not saying that someone who has always lived in a wealthy, white, sanitized environment, and from a particular culture, would be a worse journalist, but they would have a different perspective. In fact, I think all perspectives and all experiences are needed to tell all the stories that make up a society, to tell the world as faithfully as possible.”
Pascale Colisson does not work for, advise, own shares in, or receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no other affiliation than her research institution.
–ref. Are French media racist? –https://theconversation.com/are-french-media-racist-279934