"Distracting (and Perverse) French News or the Restrained (and Normative) Japanese News" by Eric Mircher

[This is a continuation of my translations of Eric Mircher's original articles.  Please read this introduction for the background behind this project.]

     Return from Japan.  The distance between how news stories are presented between the European and Asian continents is enormous and raises a few questions.

     The news as presented by NHK—the number one and semi-official public television station in Japan—is the model that is followed by all the other stations.  After a slight inflection of his torso, the news anchor presents in a monotone all the news items of the day.  There is no decoration on the stage set, no special effects, no staged interventions.  The only pause that is accorded in this slow litany is when the anchor is done with the international news items; the camera zooms out to then focuses on a fictional camera that appears to be filming the stage.  The anchor is silent during this adjustment, and then returns in the same discursive voice to go over the local news items of the land.  There is no emphasis placed on any particular subject, with the exception of the difference made between the local and the international news stories.  The news runs in this manner, with cuts being made for image sequences in a rhythm that is extremely balanced and identical in manner and in length of time that is accorded to each item.  Even the news anchor seems bored as he presents to the viewers the stories of the day.  Or rather, he is just doing his job, nothing more, nothing less.

     In this schema, there are very few stories that would anger viewers, very little analysis, nor is there any live round table discussions done for entertainment.  Facts, just facts.  Or rather, that which can and must be said, in an official voice, a particular discourse to follow.  There are no inflections in how the journalist looks, there is no movement of the eyebrows, there is never a betrayal of a smile that would illuminate the litany of news.  In contrast to this, there is marvelous diction, a singular voice when compared to the aggressive and noisy character of all the other television programs that are aired by all the television stations.  It is serious and formal, on television and in the version broadcasted on radio. Once one gets accustomed to this surprising way of presenting the news, one can easily become overtaken by this regular monotonous voice, in its reassuring, known, and repetitive tempo.  For a Japanese person, it is the right way to read the news: give the facts, never betray any personal opinion, in a society that sees itself as a coherent and unified body, where dissonant voices are seen as aggressive and unnecessary.  At the same time, the Japanese television viewer seems to be quite indifferent to this factual discourse.  The truth appears to be elsewhere.  The events at Fukushima showed the limits of this system of news presentation—Japanese themselves felt that they did not know what was going on and consulted the internet or foreign news sources to find out.  However, ever since, everything has fallen back into place and the inflections of the news anchor seems immutable. . . .

     This model of news presentation is something that we had in France, the daily news nick-named the “8 o'clock Mass,” which diffused the official news up until 30 years ago.  The news nowadays is supposedly freed from the tyranny of the past, or so they say.

     French television news presentations have become very much imitators of how American television broadcasts its news.  The rhythm, the sound, the voice, and the winks of the news anchor attempts to create a false complicity with the television viewer, and all this has become irregular given the many different television stations and their efforts to offer something different to attract viewership.  In this way, one attempts to endlessly warm-up a cold medium.  As a result, there is an increasing interest in presenting anecdotal news items, and this emphasis on minor news items is seen as a method to pull in the viewership by presenting “real” local French stories.  In reality though, this strategy does something altogether unsaid and pernicious.

     As such, the innumerable times one hears another report on the homeless in Paris, or the all important story of the living conditions of a large poor family, or the eternal economic woes of an old widow who is drowning in the years of her old age, or again and again the eternal unemployment of the youth living in the abandoned suburban ghettoes of the large cities of France.  It's real, sad, and so is seen to represent the real life of real people in real France.  In contrast to these stories, there is also always another report on the wayward conduct of such and such a billionaire or celebrity, the winning lottery numbers, and of course, images of people or expensive automobiles that are inaccessible to your normal middle class fellow, stuck at work.  So they say it is to give some hope through dreaming-making.  

     The way this kind of news is diffused endlessly makes one sense a certain disdain for the viewing public, this banal middle class that wakes up, goes to work and tries to put some money on the side.  One wonders how a media company would risk this kind of attitude against the very people that brings in its business.  Behind this principle of false objectivity, of chosen and truncated reality, pseudo-investigations with hidden cameras, and piecemeal analysis, runs a discursive doctrine that is identical in all the entertainment medias—one seeks neither to inform nor to convince but to distract.  To distract with the fortunes of some and the misfortunes of others.  A chosen discourse hidden behind a false objectivity that is in its way very singular and repetitive.  This is the key to attracting viewership, to blow the hot and the cold in order work the sensibility of a volatile audience that is the key to survival.

     The medium of television could have been such a great instrument of news diffusion but it has failed in its mission and like an old pervert, who has for much too long been giving lessons he did not follow himself, looks now to seduce since he can no longer instruct.

     To distract and to attract, like a perverted game.

     PS: In regards to contemporary art, the way it is treated in Japan as compared to the West is systematically in counterpoint in terms of the sensationalist aspects of money or censorship, but in general, it is non-existant.

• Article written by Eric Mircher
• (Translated from French by Roy Forget)