Un feu de paille? Il est triste de noter qu’il semble bien…

Tout le monde, — nous y compris, — avait célébré la renaissance de l’esprit critique de la presse américaine à l’occasion de Katrina. Las, il semble bien que le conformisme soit le plus fort. Il semble bien que nous soyons revenus à la flagornerie et à l’alignement courants depuis le 11 septembre. C’est comme si les chaînes du conformisme étaient les plus lourdes, sans pourtant la moindre censure extérieure, sans contrainte à strictement parler. Il y a quelque chose de “la servitude volontaire”.

C’est bien ce que constate The Independent le 3 octobre, dans un reportage teinté d’une certaine amertume, — notamment avec l’histoire de Aaron Broussard face à la NBC: « What is much more striking is how the US media, which has often seemed cowed by governmental authority since the 11 September attacks, gave a brief show of real reporting gusto — telling it like it is, challenging government officials on air, exposing their evasions and distortions and, sometimes, rank ignorance.

» After that initial flurry, however, the networks and cable news outlets have reverted dramatically to type. Not only are they again allowing the government line to be broadcast blandly and uncritically; they are actually showing signs of regretting the naked emotionalism of those first hectic days after Katrina struck.

» No example of the changing mood is more graphic than Tim Russert's highly-rated Sunday morning show on NBC, Meet the Press, which garnered more than its usual share of attention a few weeks ago because of an interview with Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, just across the Mississippi from New Orleans.

» Mr Broussard burst into tears on air as he told the story of the elderly mother of one of his own colleagues, trapped in a nursing home in a low-lying area. For days, Mr Broussard, said, the mother asked her son when help was coming. But it never materialised, despite her son's best efforts, and after five days of rising floodwaters she drowned.

» For a while, it looked as if this could be the pivotal moment when the entire country decided enough was enough — with the Bush administration and the whole corrupted culture of politics of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. But then Mr Russert lost his nerve and caved in to pressure from Bush apologists who noted, firstly, that Mr Broussard was a Democrat, and secondly, that there appeared to be some discrepancies in his nursing-home story. Mr Broussard was duly invited back to Meet the Press, and essentially accused of telling tall tales.

» It was an almost unfathomably heartless piece of gotcha journalism, which Mr Broussard, to his credit, rebuffed in no uncertain terms. “Are you kidding?” he said. “What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death? They just buried Eva last week ... that wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried.” »

Mis en ligne le 6 octobre 2005 à 10H05