Something really scary in France right now is that you can see really clearly how most mainstream media are used for propaganda.
Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him.
It's hard to imagine but non stop.
You have everyday interviews of his family saying that it is an injustice, that he did nothing, that the judgement was rigged, that he was a great men that served France and so should not be treated like everyone else. Article about how sad the poor family is. Number of articles repeating friends of him verbatim s that the judgement was fake.
Almost none speaking about the facts, the grounds for his sentence, the big number of other trials against him that are running. And also the other definitive convictions he got. Like for attempting to bribe a head prosecutor to get insider info about his case. Using a prepaid line opened with a fake name...
But what you see in the end is that 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.
> Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him.
How much of this is driven by contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting?
I’m not familiar with French media, but I see the same pattern in every country where I’ve kept up with the news: Media starts being favorable to a topic when it’s up and coming, switching to being highly critical when that topic becomes mainstream, then reverts again to exploring the positives when the topic falls out of favor.
You see it even with people like Elizabeth Holmes. News stories about her fraud were everywhere until she had to go to jail, but now the news has swung to humanizing her, claiming her sentencing was excessive, focusing on the angle of a mother separated from her children, and confusingly ignoring her fraud at all.
It’s all designed to be counter-narrative and rise waves of controversy. The more controversial, the more shares and views.
Always has been, for those willing to pay for smart and unscrupulous people to manipulate the news. People must know this is what is happening but they are still seduced by the media. The brilliant Chicago press conference musical number comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBM82Ju2kJU and the source material there was essentially the same techniques working to making murderers sympathetic, in 1924.
At least in France he’ll serve a sentence- in the US we might have elected him again and let him make the charges go away.
I think that, at least from my American perspective, there are two uncomfortable truths about national political figures:
1. They are the voice of a group of millions of people, and therefore a perception will exist that an attack on the politician is an attack on those people as well
2. Sure seems like a lot of them are compromised in some way, so any time one is targeted it will always seem selective in the moment
I don't know how much that intersects with what you're observing, and I don't really have easy answers.
I don't think this problem is exclusive to France. I'm more interested in how the consumption and consideration of mainstream media is trending given its rampant bias. Clearly they think they can get away with it, I wonder if people are letting them.
The fact that he is even going to jail, or that there was a trial at all, is amazing. In Canada, top-level corruption like this just gets covered up by RCMP (who are directly top-down controlled by PM) - many cases of this.
I mean he's going to jail. If anything that's better than most countries. In India, a chief minister who instigated racial riots never even had to go to court for it and he even became the current de facto autocrate
In the last years I've noticed a huge number of pro sarkozy videos with epic soundtracks and diverse appearances from the guy. He is clearly a good speaker, but also clearly incompetent and mostly a good actor. I also noticed how much they invited his son to talk about important topics when the guy is just... The son of sarkozy
it should be repeated ad-nauseam that he is a crook, a shame for the country and its values and that the whole discourse about the injustice of the sentencing has heavy anti-liberal vibes
What's crazy to me is seeing this happen at an individual level. In 2022, my conservative family members were reluctantly but firmly on board with the idea that Trump did the crimes: lied to the tax man, stole the classified documents, leaned on the Georgia secretary of state to "find me 11780 votes," and on Jan 6 set up fake electors and asked Pence to overturn the election. In each case, they gave a good fight, but as those who are familiar with these cases know, the evidence is overwhelming, almost comically so at points (the fake elector certifications are so poorly put together that they are tough not to laugh at, the recording of trump bragging about the classified documents and establishing intent belongs in a law school documentary).
By 2024 they were 100% in lock-step with the party line that all cases were fake news lawfare (but wouldn't engage with detailed argument, of course) and in 2025 they are gaslighting me about ever having had those arguments at all. The only thing keeping me sane is the correspondence that I kept proving that our conversations weren't a product of my own fevered imagination.
What incentive does the French media (or any media for that matter) has to tell the truth?
I do not want to be all about doom and gloom but I do not think that there is any media on this planet that delivers factual information without lying (either directly or by omission) to shape the opinion. And no, having a narrative is not lying as long as all the facts are presented, which allows the reader to make their own judgement whether they are buying into the narrative or not. Unfortunately, today journalists/editors believe that they have to report in a specific way as otherwise the “fight” would be lost.
Most of western media is extremely biased and not different than Chinese media. Good luck finding a job as a journalist with controversial ideas. Only the selected minds are offered positions. Of course we in the west still have a choice to read from different sources, but 95% of the people are stuck with propaganda news outlets.
Clearly, all the right-wing papers that have traditionnaly supported him (Le Figaro, Match) and all the hard-right-wing papers (owned by Bolloré, Arnault, etc..) that have _personnal_ ties to him are playing their "opinion" part.
I don't think public media is defending him at all. Left or Center-left papers are not (obviously.)
The tie breaker would be: "what is TF1 20h saying" (this is, no matter what new media says, still the one thing that most people watch and treat as "the news") - and I don't think they have been "blatantly" defending him.
> But what you see in the end is that 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.
The only way the current wave of right-wing media ends if by finding a new way to fund media & making it impossible to concentrate in the ends of a few rich folks.
And good luck with that, folks don't want to pay for media.
The real question I have in my mind, observing this from Germany, is: How much dirt does Sarkozy have on these families that own the media/press?
Was this a regime similar to Putin's role in the FSB when he collected all the dirt on oligarchs until everyone was controllable?
The logical choice for a media agency would be to disassociate themselves from Sarkozy, not the other way round. There has to be something else at play here, and I'm assuming it's not financial control because Sarkozy's family should not have much influence left there, given that the Judicative rulings already are done.
That's not the issue. The issue is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of french politicians who should be in jail.
I don't disagree with him going to jail: but it's one heck of a corrupt country where they all have their hands in the cookie jar.
Most french politicians who served at the EU, for example, have friends and family as "employees" on their payroll (well, on the EU citizens' payroll). Same at non-EU level: it's called "emplois fictifs" in french ("fictional jobs"). Soooo many stories about politicians at so many local, regional, national and supra-national levels engaging in "emplois fictifs".
So many mayors in France have dirty money on their hands. Where for example they block construction permits then, once joyfully greased with cash, allow the construction permits.
But Sarkozy was right-wing and the EU, and France in particular, is ultra left-wing. So it's good to put a right-wing president in jail.
Once again: I've got nothing against him going to jail. But we're talking about a country were judges are openly leftists. They're not impartial.
It's all rotten and disgusting.
And why do you think all the leftist french mainstream media root for right-wing Sarkozy? Because these media are at the hand of corrupt politicians who think a politician going to jail is a dangerous precedent. They're nearly all corrupt, so they're shitting their pants to see that even a president is sent to jail.
But yup: one politician in jail. Great. Only 9999 more to go. And corrupt judges.
A former Prime Minister of a first world country in jail is insane. He must have made a crime without the help of others because in political scandals usually a whole gang of public people is liable. Then you have to convict the monkey with the bananas and the whole tree.
If we follow the French justice, in my country (Greece) about 10% of people including almost all the politicians of the last decades should be in jail.
Imagine, a land full of mother sauces, divine cuisine and pastries, and a corrupt and sentenced felon actually facing (eventual) justice for the crimes they committed. This sounds like a magical land (all is relative).
In some ways, this reminds me of Bernard Tapie, called "a man with 1001 lives". It's a really interesting story from 1980s/90s of a self-made-businessman, turned politician, getting to the very top, doing deals with African leaders, becoming minister, having his football club (Marseille) win the European Champions League; which however was a turning point that started his downfall, as they bought a domestic game just before, to avoid injuries before the big final.
A very interesting documentary [2] explains all this. There's also Netflix series that I didn't watch though.
We, French, are very proud of having put an ex-President in jail, for his crimes of having tried to whitewash a dictator responsible for the death of more French people than the Bataclan terror attacks in exchange for money.
This person humiliated our country, and we're glad our justice put him behind bars
There is no excuse for corruption. However, everyone in all countries should ask themselves whether or not most of the representatives in their congress/parliament would, if investigated, be found guilty of the same sort of corruption. Power corrupts.
Why when a high profile politic is sentenced it goes to a 5 star suite while the rest of mortals are thrown to a hole?
It seems that when you cross a certain invisible threshold "justice" applies just a bit differently. Same in Argentina with corrupt and ex-robber Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
South korea and Brazil have already punished their criminal ex-prime ministers and ex-presidents. And, now France. It's high time the suit is followed here in US as well. The next right step at this point is to throw the clown behind the bars!! Serve the Justice!!!
By the way, this is not possible in the U.S and in many other countries. When someone is convicted of a crime, they don’t usually start serving a prison sentence until the case is final. If they appeal, the sentence is automatically paused or can be stayed by the court. In practice, this means you don’t go to prison (unless you are already in preventive detention because of flight risk or danger) while your case is still being fought in higher courts.
Reassuring that there are still democracies where presidents who commit crimes go to jail instead of being allowed to continue committing crimes and pardoning other people who commit crimes.
This is slightly off-topic, but is it "jail" or "prison"? I see this switch all the time, and French does not make a difference. But, in English, and many other languages, jail is more specific than prison, and is usually for short term or pre-sentencing holding. If someone is sentenced, it's usually a different facility called "prison". Is BBC making a mistake, or are they actually saying Sarkozy will be held in in an actual jail?
[+] [-] greatgib|5 months ago|reply
Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. It's hard to imagine but non stop. You have everyday interviews of his family saying that it is an injustice, that he did nothing, that the judgement was rigged, that he was a great men that served France and so should not be treated like everyone else. Article about how sad the poor family is. Number of articles repeating friends of him verbatim s that the judgement was fake.
Almost none speaking about the facts, the grounds for his sentence, the big number of other trials against him that are running. And also the other definitive convictions he got. Like for attempting to bribe a head prosecutor to get insider info about his case. Using a prepaid line opened with a fake name...
But what you see in the end is that 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.
[+] [-] Aurornis|5 months ago|reply
How much of this is driven by contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting?
I’m not familiar with French media, but I see the same pattern in every country where I’ve kept up with the news: Media starts being favorable to a topic when it’s up and coming, switching to being highly critical when that topic becomes mainstream, then reverts again to exploring the positives when the topic falls out of favor.
You see it even with people like Elizabeth Holmes. News stories about her fraud were everywhere until she had to go to jail, but now the news has swung to humanizing her, claiming her sentencing was excessive, focusing on the angle of a mother separated from her children, and confusingly ignoring her fraud at all.
It’s all designed to be counter-narrative and rise waves of controversy. The more controversial, the more shares and views.
[+] [-] mattnewton|5 months ago|reply
At least in France he’ll serve a sentence- in the US we might have elected him again and let him make the charges go away.
[+] [-] Brendinooo|5 months ago|reply
1. They are the voice of a group of millions of people, and therefore a perception will exist that an attack on the politician is an attack on those people as well 2. Sure seems like a lot of them are compromised in some way, so any time one is targeted it will always seem selective in the moment
I don't know how much that intersects with what you're observing, and I don't really have easy answers.
[+] [-] lunias|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] add-sub-mul-div|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] epolanski|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wubrr|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] oulipo2|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jmkni|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] tekbruh9000|5 months ago|reply
Faith based society is not just the domain of the religious. 1984 been the norm since well before Orwell wrote the book.
[+] [-] akkad33|5 months ago|reply
I mean he's going to jail. If anything that's better than most countries. In India, a chief minister who instigated racial riots never even had to go to court for it and he even became the current de facto autocrate
[+] [-] fred_is_fred|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] h1fra|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] MangoToupe|5 months ago|reply
Was there ever a time or place where this was not true?
[+] [-] baby|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|5 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] VeejayRampay|5 months ago|reply
it should be repeated ad-nauseam that he is a crook, a shame for the country and its values and that the whole discourse about the injustice of the sentencing has heavy anti-liberal vibes
[+] [-] schmidtleonard|5 months ago|reply
By 2024 they were 100% in lock-step with the party line that all cases were fake news lawfare (but wouldn't engage with detailed argument, of course) and in 2025 they are gaslighting me about ever having had those arguments at all. The only thing keeping me sane is the correspondence that I kept proving that our conversations weren't a product of my own fevered imagination.
[+] [-] scotty79|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Hilift|5 months ago|reply
That isn't a problem if the electorate aren't easily influenced.
[+] [-] reliabilityguy|5 months ago|reply
I do not want to be all about doom and gloom but I do not think that there is any media on this planet that delivers factual information without lying (either directly or by omission) to shape the opinion. And no, having a narrative is not lying as long as all the facts are presented, which allows the reader to make their own judgement whether they are buying into the narrative or not. Unfortunately, today journalists/editors believe that they have to report in a specific way as otherwise the “fight” would be lost.
[+] [-] duxup|5 months ago|reply
Not sure how much an impact what you describe is having.
I see non optional and IMO skewed reporting all the time, I'm not sure it is all directed by someone.
[+] [-] holoduke|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] phtrivier|5 months ago|reply
Clearly, all the right-wing papers that have traditionnaly supported him (Le Figaro, Match) and all the hard-right-wing papers (owned by Bolloré, Arnault, etc..) that have _personnal_ ties to him are playing their "opinion" part.
I don't think public media is defending him at all. Left or Center-left papers are not (obviously.)
The tie breaker would be: "what is TF1 20h saying" (this is, no matter what new media says, still the one thing that most people watch and treat as "the news") - and I don't think they have been "blatantly" defending him.
[+] [-] thatfrenchguy|5 months ago|reply
The only way the current wave of right-wing media ends if by finding a new way to fund media & making it impossible to concentrate in the ends of a few rich folks.
And good luck with that, folks don't want to pay for media.
[+] [-] cookiengineer|5 months ago|reply
Was this a regime similar to Putin's role in the FSB when he collected all the dirt on oligarchs until everyone was controllable?
The logical choice for a media agency would be to disassociate themselves from Sarkozy, not the other way round. There has to be something else at play here, and I'm assuming it's not financial control because Sarkozy's family should not have much influence left there, given that the Judicative rulings already are done.
[+] [-] lapadite2|5 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|5 months ago|reply
I don't disagree with him going to jail: but it's one heck of a corrupt country where they all have their hands in the cookie jar.
Most french politicians who served at the EU, for example, have friends and family as "employees" on their payroll (well, on the EU citizens' payroll). Same at non-EU level: it's called "emplois fictifs" in french ("fictional jobs"). Soooo many stories about politicians at so many local, regional, national and supra-national levels engaging in "emplois fictifs".
So many mayors in France have dirty money on their hands. Where for example they block construction permits then, once joyfully greased with cash, allow the construction permits.
But Sarkozy was right-wing and the EU, and France in particular, is ultra left-wing. So it's good to put a right-wing president in jail.
Once again: I've got nothing against him going to jail. But we're talking about a country were judges are openly leftists. They're not impartial.
It's all rotten and disgusting.
And why do you think all the leftist french mainstream media root for right-wing Sarkozy? Because these media are at the hand of corrupt politicians who think a politician going to jail is a dangerous precedent. They're nearly all corrupt, so they're shitting their pants to see that even a president is sent to jail.
But yup: one politician in jail. Great. Only 9999 more to go. And corrupt judges.
[+] [-] tsoukase|5 months ago|reply
If we follow the French justice, in my country (Greece) about 10% of people including almost all the politicians of the last decades should be in jail.
[+] [-] baggachipz|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jakub_g|5 months ago|reply
A very interesting documentary [2] explains all this. There's also Netflix series that I didn't watch though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Tapie
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_football_bribery_scanda...
[2] https://lcp.fr/programmes/les-mille-et-une-vies-de-bernard-t...
[+] [-] franze|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ErroneousBosh|5 months ago|reply
"Why?"
"It saves time."
[+] [-] tasuki|5 months ago|reply
The Count of Monte Cristo is a good choice.
[+] [-] littlestymaar|5 months ago|reply
He delayed the case enough (almost 13 years) so that he's now more than 70 though and I doubt he stays to long in prison because of his age.
But it's nice to see that he couldn't run away from justice forever and is finally in jail.
[+] [-] qq66|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] oulipo2|5 months ago|reply
This person humiliated our country, and we're glad our justice put him behind bars
[+] [-] boltzmann-brain|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ytNumbers|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] josefritzishere|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] liendolucas|5 months ago|reply
It seems that when you cross a certain invisible threshold "justice" applies just a bit differently. Same in Argentina with corrupt and ex-robber Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
[+] [-] mandeepj|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] randomtoast|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wiether|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rapsey|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|5 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Demiurge|5 months ago|reply