Interview with Robert Ménard on the Media and the "Cults" Question

Robert Ménard is a French journalist, one of the founders of Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders) and a co-founder of the magazine Médias. In this interview he turns his press-freedom lens on the French media themselves, and on their treatment of the question of “cults”.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 19 December 2012. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: The magazine folded for lack of advertisers. From March 2010 to July 2012 he hosted the programme « Ménard sans interdit » on i>Télé, where he received public figures. It was on that occasion that he received Georges Fenech, then president of the MIVILUDES. He is, to our knowledge, the only journalist who managed to question the substance of the MIVILUDES’s action when its report was presented in 2010. Robert Ménard recently launched a new news website, Boulevard Voltaire. In this interview he sets out his criticism of the media. He answers more particularly on the treatment of the question of dérives sectaires.

[Ménard]: Everyone can see it: one cannot say that the media in France are free, but perhaps not for the reasons one imagines. In any case, there are all sorts of points of view, all sorts of people, all sorts of issues that have no place in the traditional media, in the big media, in the mass media. And that is why we had created Médias, that review — to reflect on this aspect, you understand, of attacks on press freedom, broadly speaking within democracies. Not in authoritarian regimes. And there I discovered — well, I come straight back to what interests you — I discovered, returning to journalism, I mean to its practice, 25 years later, to what degree press freedom was corseted, limited in the French media; but it is not so for the reasons invoked by journalists.

What do they tell you, the journalists? They tell you there is pressure from politicians. That is true, there is some, but it is marginal. They tell you there is pressure from advertising agencies: if ever you say something they do not like, they cut off your funds. That is true, I do not dispute it. They tell you there are the owners of the media, who are often companies that need contracts from the State — in construction, in armaments — and who therefore have no wish, broadly speaking, to upset the people who run the State. That is true. But what they forget to tell you, once they have told you all that, is that there is a fourth actor, the most harmful in terms of press freedom: the journalists themselves — and not the managements, the journalists themselves.

What do I mean by that? I mean that journalists come from the same milieus, they think the same things, they feed and quench their thirst at the same sources — that is, at the media, each copying the other. They have a holy terror of one thing: displeasing the greatest number. And all of that makes for media that hunt in packs on the cults — it is the very example of it — that applaud at the same moment, that hate at the same moment, and that repeat endlessly the same — I was going to say lies; let us say tall tales, so as not to be too disagreeable. That is what I observed.

The moment you try to say: but perhaps it is more complicated than that, perhaps there are dérives sectaires — I am not at all, you understand, a specialist in this — but perhaps not all Jehovah’s Witnesses are bastards, perhaps among the people in the Church of Scientology there are people of good faith — people of good faith exist too, more or less everywhere. You say that, and then: hold on, how can you give these people a platform? How can you have them on? How can you make yourself the agent of… You must be some kind of proselyte in hiding, and so on — you understand that this is not my problem. These minority churches, to use a term I prefer to that of “cult” — but of course you are immediately pointed at, because you are not within the doxa: it is already settled, already established, no debate is possible.

So there you are, in a milieu like that. And you understand, it is not out of malice at all; they are not manipulated, nobody is pulling the strings. No, there is no need to pull strings, no need to manipulate them, because that is what the rank-and-file journalist thinks. And you understand, he thinks it sincerely — that these people are bastards, whether because they are Jehovah’s Witnesses, or whatever else.

[Interviewer]: But do you think they really believe it, or is it just intellectual laziness, meaning they never went to look?

[Ménard]: It is both. Perhaps yes, there is that; but at the same time, that is the laziness. When you are in a rolling-news outlet, the answer you will get is: obviously, we are not going to investigate everything, all day long, when we do news 24 hours a day. At a pinch, I would accept someone saying “I don’t know”; in that case, you give everyone a voice, you privilege no one. Me, I trust the people behind the screen, who will watch the programme I used to make — since I no longer make it. And I would dream of being able to have them debate in a debate that is fair — that is, where you do not put 23 victims of cults on one side (and there are victims of cults) and then, on the other side, one single fellow who becomes everyone’s scapegoat. You see what I mean? Hold on — I am not absolving anyone of a certain number of practices that are reprehensible.

On the question of cults, my only point of view is that there are enough laws in France to protect children, to protect vulnerable people, and, if there are problems of that kind, to have the people who behave badly convicted — and they must be convicted. For the rest, we slide quickly into a trial of thought, a trial of speech. There is a thing called religious freedom; it does not apply only to the great monotheistic religions, it must apply to everyone.

[Interviewer]: Is this not precisely a problem of semantics, where we use expressions that no longer mean anything, but which are accepted, as you were saying, through sheer repetition, by the public, by the media, which repeat them?

[Ménard]: You are absolutely right. Let me take another term, to see how the media operate: sulfureux — “sulphurous”. You know, we say that someone is “sulphurous”. What does that mean, sulphurous? It lets you smear someone, because it insinuates… If I say of you, “you are sulphurous”, what does that mean? Not clean, not clear-cut — in short, that you have things to hide. At the same time, I am saying nothing precise; you cannot sue me. Sulphurous — I did not say you were a thief, I did not say you were a murderer, I did not say you were a crook, because if I say those three words to you, you take me to court, you win. I say “sulphurous”: deep down, yes, it is not kind, but after all, it lets everything be understood while saying nothing. I agree with you. Behind the word “cult”, people are being smeared. It is not really inevitable. It is not an insult, but it lets everything be understood.

When I speak of dérive sectaire, I am speaking of… there have been behaviours, by groups of that kind, that are punishable by law. Me, I say: let people be convicted, and let the case be won [inaudible ?] firmly and without any qualms. When children are mistreated, when children are the victims of behaviours that are punishable — hold on, under the criminal code, let them be convicted and all. For everything else, we must be careful, because we invent words, we invent labels. We invent words that make it possible to point the finger, to excommunicate — if I may risk that bad pun in the domain of cults — behaviours that are more complicated than that.

[Interviewer]: Now, you mentioned to Georges Fenech the fact that the UN, for example, criticized France’s policy, and broadly he replied that the institution was infiltrated by NGOs that were founded [inaudible ?] by cults. What do you make of that? You who have travelled…

[Ménard]: It is taking people for fools. Simply — France is France. France has, in this domain, a conception of religious freedom that is narrow to say the least, and the whole Anglo-Saxon world has a more open vision of it. Moreover, a whole host of countries of the South are confronted with the rise of minority religions relative to the major religions. Once again, whether I think well or ill of that hardly matters; the fact is, I observe it. And they are therefore perhaps more sensitive than in France to open-mindedness, to the need to take that into account.

Go into the banlieues: there is a growth of Islam. But you know, the most significant growth is not Islam; it is all the Protestant movements, the evangelicals and so on. Are all these people cults? In a society marked by such individualism, is seeking a place where — rightly or wrongly, in one way or another, and I may not share its modalities in every detail — people keep each other warm and protect one another: does that not, in itself, deserve better than a condemnation, and perhaps a somewhat attentive regard for others? Of course it does. No — Mr Fenech’s answer on that is simply not serious. Not serious.

As for the MIVILUDES report, allow me to tell you — having cast a slightly more serious eye over it than I may give the impression of here — that it was often done in slapdash fashion, mixing together everything and anything. And there, that raises a certain number of points. One must be careful, because a certain number of people are being pointed at, and one must be careful when one accuses people.

[Interviewer]: Finally, in conclusion, you asked him whether he was not a little like a thought police?

[Ménard]: He is not an exception, Mr Fenech. He is, in the domain of cults, at bottom, the product of the behaviour of the political class — or of the political class and the media combined. There is a doxa, there is a way of seeing things that must be shared by everyone. If you do not think that, then you are automatically the instrument of a certain number of people. People cannot imagine that you might give a platform, broadly speaking, to the villains of the story without your having a personal interest in it, or without your sharing those people’s point of view. Me, I have spent my life giving a platform to people with whom I do not share a quarter of the beginning of a sentence. But I think these people must be heard.

[Interviewer]: What happened after that interview with Georges Fenech? What was the reaction? Were you reproached for it?

[Ménard]: No, I was not reproached for it, but everyone — a whole host of people — was astonished at that choice; astonished. But I remember having received Opus Dei, which is a very different case, since it is a part of the Catholic Church — and Roman, as official as can be, and all.

Same thing: the idea, for a whole host of media — Opus Dei, you know, is the villain in The Da Vinci Code, you know, the raving madman in that novel everyone has seen. And there again, it is: how can you give a platform to the devil, if I may say so — for Opus Dei, that really is the limit. The same, for the cults, it is the same. That is to say that, spontaneously, the newsrooms have chosen their side. They hate the pope — the pope is obviously the bad guy —, they hate the cults, they hate Opus Dei, they hate, I don’t know, Marine Le Pen, they hate the people who raise questions about abortion, they hate all of that.

So, the reaction: it was… in that case there was no particular reaction, but if you like, it made my file a little worse still, because those were not the only people I received, and not only in those conditions — so each time, it complicates things.

[Interviewer]: There are, all the same, journalists who might want, perhaps, from time to time, to write something that steps a little outside…

[Ménard]: Then let them do it.

[Interviewer]: And do you think it would be accepted?

[Ménard]: Oh, come on… I am fed up with hearing that argument. No, no, no — let them take their courage in both hands and do it. The journalists who tell me: yes, but you understand, I cannot do this and that — well hello, you take risks. You cannot spend your life, when you are a journalist, lecturing the rest of the world, marvelling at the cowardice of the political class, finding that corporatism wreaks havoc, that really, people lack the courage of their convictions — and then, as soon as it is you, well then, it is over. Ah yes, you understand, I have a kid and all — well yes, I have four of them, enough, let us stop there. Yes, it can be complicated in the newsrooms, but come on — otherwise, do not claim to be in this profession. If, in my profession, I stake something that belongs — in triple quotation marks — to the realm of the intellectual, then one must not, all the same, exaggerate, broadly speaking, about what I think and what I am.

[Interviewer]: But then it is worth fighting, is it not? It is worth taking risks.

[Ménard]: It happens, things move, things are changing. Because in France, you are in the worst of countries for this. We do not like debate in France… no, that is not true: we like debate locked in among, broadly speaking, the respectable people. And the people you are talking about are classified among the not-respectable people. And they have no place around the table of the people one wants to bring together in the media. Or, if one or another of them is called upon, it is to point the finger at him and make him the scapegoat of the evening. That is the terrain we are on.

Me, I think the internet is changing that. People no longer believe the traditional media. And that is massive. It is neither right nor left, neither far right nor far left. People no longer believe the traditional media. Because they have gauged, each at their own level, on a subject they knew, that what they had been told was at worst hogwash, at best a kind of Manichaean thing that did not account for what they had seen or lived. So that, by extension, people say to themselves: hold on — if what I know is treated this badly, what will it be like for all the rest?