A boar was rescued as it swam two kilometers from the Marina Baie des Anges. A sailboat ran aground on a reef early Sunday morning just off the coast of Antibes. These news stories made headlines of the Nice Matin over the weekend.
But even the Nice Matin increasingly shows more focus on events of global import. This weekend, European news was dominated by the crash of a plane carrying 96 Polish officials en route to Katyn to commemorate the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish elite under the orders of Stalin. And the Nice Matin, which often focuses on the “insolite,” provided coverage. News travels ever more quickly in our global community.
Years ago, neighbors in my rural French community told me political assassinations or disasters were of little importance to their way of life. They meant, they still worked as masons or would have an aperitif at the end of the day, and they looked forward to hunting season. But with globalization, we have become more involved with events outside of our home communities. When I learned of this weekend’s tragedy, I wrote a Polish friend in Nice, where 3,000 Poles live. Within a couple of hours she wrote back, “There are tragic locations that attract misfortune.”
Headlines of the national media focused on Poland. Of the numerous articles about Katyn in Le Nouvel Observateur, a translated essay from Newsweek (“What Next for Poland’ by Andrew Nagorski) pointed out that certain events (like Pearl Harbor in the US or Katyn for the Polish) become symbols of tragedy, just like my friend had pointed out. These places need no words to convey the enormity. The journal also carried reactions from dignitaries around the world, including that of former Polish president Lech Walesa. Le Monde described journalists in tears and compared the gathering of dignitaries at White House to Buckingham Palace when news broke about the death of Princess Diana.
News not only travels fast, but so do reactions. For some readers, the Polish disaster raised questions about why so many officials traveled together on one plane. Others questioned airline policy that allowed landing in unsafe weather. Some readers criticized journalists for their lack of objectivity in coverage. Too much emotions and too many clichés, these readers said. Still other readers alluded to the cover up—the attempts to blame Nazi Germany for Katyn rather than Stalinist Russia. Unlike the media of years ago, we now have a type of dialogue that brings additional meaning to these events, some of which might have remained buried in history.
Swimming boars and grounded sailboats provide strange and ostensibly trivial stories that link together tragedies of great magnitude. Like its counterparts, the Nice Matin has always covered local news, which reflects the fabric of our society. But it also provides the major stories and reader reactions, which suggest that people do seem concerned by what transpires outside of their immediate community.
It must surely be cheaper to subscribe to a news service rather than hire local writers. That may have something to do with the new focus on international news.
ReplyDeleteGood point. The local papers need to focus on local. . . we have so many national and international. . . lots of similar stories (e.g., the Newsweek carried by the French national press). It raises the point about a marketplace of ideas. Difficult to achieve if media subscribe to similar wire services or syndicates.
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