Unbalanced tag[edit]

Nearly 50% of this page is taken up with allegations of anti-Israel bias in its news reporting. I know the al-Durrah saga has long generated excitement in blogland, but the Gaza stuff seems utterly at the level of triviality and WP:RECENTISM. I mean, they used a wrong piece of video and then apologised for it? In my view that whole section should go, and the al-Durrah stuff should only be here as a footnote in a much broader article that tells the reader about the network as a whole. Until that happens, this page just looks like an attack piece dominated by partisan commentary (much of it from rival media organisations) masquerading as an encyclopedia article. If I get some time I'll start some research, perhaps others (any French editors?) can help out too. In the meantime this tag needs to be here. --Nickhh (talk) 13:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I don't disagree that the article is unbalanced. However the way to deal with that is to expand the article in another direction, not by deleting reliable information. I urge you to go ahead and expand the article. Tundrabuggy (talk) 16:09, 19 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree the main thing is to expand the broader article, but equally the Gaza stuff seems a genuinely trivial and passing issue to me, and would be even in a fuller article. Just because something can be sourced, that doesn't mean it has to be here. It needs to be relevant, significant, whatever. Otherwise we could create articles for every reported instance of a cat being stuck up a tree, or add details of every newspaper report ever written about him to the Tom Cruise page. By contrast the issue of France 2's coverage of the al-Durrah killing is an ongoing drama (in some circles at least), and did end in litigation, so is more notable. --Nickhh (talk) 17:36, 19 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes, for some reason, the Gaza stuff had been inserted: I've deleted it on a) the grounds that the citations did not support the pre-edited text; b) it was irrelevant to the article. 84.65.15.115 (talk) 00:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

By the way, the above comment about deletion was penned by me, an Irish German; work that out. die Baumfabrik (talk) 01:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I appreciate you were being bold with those edits, but I disagree that the material you removed was irrelevant to the article, or unsupported by the given references. Blanking big chunks of sourced material is frowned upon, so please don't do it again without consensus on this talk page. Canadian Monkey (talk) 18:36, 22 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]


- This article is extremely unbalanced. Please compare it to the French-language counterpart of this article in Wikipedia. France 2 is an important institution. It is the main French public channel, the equivalent of PBS in the USA and the BBC in the UK. It is probably the main French-language medium of record. The article gives the impression that France 2 is above all an unreliable medium characterized by an obsession with the Middle East and an intense anti-Israeli bias. While it is true that the dominant attitude toward Israel and the Arab world is somewhat different in France and in English-speaking countries, this difference does not justify such a presentation. Wikipedia should be a source of balanced information, not a party to polemics or an agent covertly engaged in the construction of readers' worldviews in the service of geopolitical goals. Why not start by fully translating into English the much more complete French-language Wikipedia article about France 2? I am a professional French/English translator, and I can perform this translation if needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Traxip (talk • contribs) 05:36, 17 October 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Gaza[edit]

The material was significant enough to warrant mention in high-profile reliable sources. Perhaps it can be trimmed down, but please don't simply remove entire paragraphs of sourced material w/o consensus. Canadian Monkey (talk) 00:20, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sorry, we have an account by a rival/competitor network about how a wrong videotape was plucked from the archives, and how the broadcaster then apologised for it when the error was pointed out? If you can point me to where every single story ever highlighted on Fox News - or indeed on any broadcaster - about a topic is noted here on WP on the basis that it is "mentioned in high-profile reliable sources", that would be great. Again, this is either a serious encyclopedia about significant issues relating to specific subject matters, or it's a dumping ground for every "look what I saw on the web yesterday which gives a bad impression of this TV station/journalist/country" piece of rubbish. --Nickhh (talk) 00:49, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree. It's grossly disproportionate, as is all the Middle East coverage in the article. We're talking about a handful of controversies mostly fanned by right-wing American outlets over the past couple of years; this is a TV channel which has been around for 36 years. Singling out a few episodes of manufactured outrage is an absolutely textbook example of recentism. I've added some historical material; we need to reduce the Middle East material to a minimum, no more than a sentence or two at the most. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Anti-Israel bias[edit]

Perhaps we can merge the whole bit into criticism related to an anti-Israel bias. Tundrabuggy (talk) 05:24, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Which I did. There are numerous references to France 2's anti-Israel bias. I found this one from the Brussels Journal in relation to the latest Gaza incident, quite succinctly put:

In one of the more outrageous examples of anti-Israel media bias, France 2 national public television used an outdated amateur video of Palestinian casualties from an accidental truck explosion in 2005 as current footage demonstrating the violence in Gaza. The video shows dead bodies of babies being laid out on white sheets. France 2 was forced to come clean when a French political blog uncovered the trickery. (France 2 also was responsible for a September 2000 report, accused of being a fake, of the supposed shooting death of Mohammed al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, by the Israeli army.)

and there is this from the Spectator and Melanie Phillips:

Various anti-Israel websites who had leapt with enthusiasm on this apparent evidence of Israeli perfidy were forced to acknowledge they had been had.
But now just look who also fell into the trap: France 2, the French national broadcasting station which transmitted the Mohammed al Durah staged ‘Pallywood’ blood libel (which I wrote about here) and has never acknowledged or apologised for that most grievous mistake. It appears that France 2 transmitted the 2005 Jabaliyah truck explosion as evidence of an Israeli strike on civilians on January 1, for which it has now made a formal apology to viewers in its news broadcast.

Anyway, on grounds that it is a valid criticism that dogs France 2, just as it dogs the BBC (see Balen Report), I have re-added the information under a specific heading of slanted coverage. Similar allegations are provided on the BBC page, under the "News" section. As I said, the answer is to expand the article with other pertinent information so as not to make the allegations appear so prominent. The BBC page is a good example. I would suggest using that as a template to improve this article, rather than deleting information to achieve balance. Tundrabuggy (talk) 05:54, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please see my comment above - Again, this is either a serious encyclopedia about significant issues relating to specific subject matters, or it's a dumping ground for every "look what I saw on the web yesterday which gives a bad impression of this TV station/journalist/country" piece of rubbish. You are now pointing us to a couple of virulent opinion pieces, one an article originally published on Pajamas Media and the other from Melanie Phillips' Spectator blog. Again, I have no problem with a note about the al-Durrah case, properly written up as an issue which led to litigation; but an apparent technical error which has been seized on in a couple of ranting online opinion pieces and in the blogosphere does not need to be here at all (even in a bigger article), and certainly should not be strung together with other vague allegations as if to suggest "ooh, there may be something in all this". It is, to repeat the point, an utter triviality. --Nickhh (talk) 14:24, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've removed the video/Gaza stuff again. To repeat - no serious sources are suggesting that this is really a notable or significant issue, which in any way bolsters or justifies any "accusations of bias"-type sub-section. And note as well, Muhammad al-Durrah was shot (and killed), not merely involved in an "incident". No, really. --Nickhh (talk) 00:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Notability is defined by the coverage an incident gets. The mistaken video incident was covered by a mainstream US TV network (Fox), by the Gulf Daily News, the Gulf Times, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the First Post, and prompted a formal apology by F2 in Le Figaro. These are all serious sources that suggest, by the very act of covering the issue, that it is really notable and significant. You may think it is 'utter triviality', but we go by what reliable sources say, not by Nickhh's personal opinions. Canadian Monkey (talk) 01:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Again, just because something relating to a recent event has been mentioned somewhere once or twice on the web, even in some mainstream-ish news sources, does not mean it needs to be here in an encyclopedia article. See WP:NOT#NEWS, on top of WP:UNDUE and WP:RECENTISM. Falling back on the "it's mentioned in this news article, and that's the end of it" is basically abuse of the rules by excessive literalism, to justify any old sh#t being dumped into every article via the magic of Google. It inevitably leads to the cherry-picking of information and lopsided attack articles like this one. Shall I now head over to the IDF page - or indeed the article about any national army, news outlet or government/politician - and add every reported instance of that organisation or individual making a (false) statement, or issuing an inaccurate video, whether by mistake or otherwise? By this interpretation of the rules, this would not only be OK, it would be actively encouraged. Why is it such a struggle to get balanced, decent, neutral articles in this place? And does the I-P virus have to find its way into every article here? --Nickhh (talk) 15:11, 28 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This incident was covered by every major French media, prompted F2 to issue multiple apologies in more than one venue, and was covered by numerous mainstream sources outside of France, as referenced in the article. It was a notable event, as evidenced by the coverage. We have similar, and in most cases much larger, critical sections about CNN, Fox news CBS, and others. If we can be critical of Fox news to the point of having an entire article dedicated to criticisms of it, some it if trivialities such as 'Media watchdog group Media Matters criticized Your World with Neil Cavuto for its focus on soft news stories' - we can have a section here that describes an event which F2 itslef felled compleed to explain away in mainstream media. Canadian Monkey (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Again, the fact that something was reported, even in several news outlets for a brief moment, does not by itself make it significant enough for a broad encyclopedia article. Also, re your point about the Fox News article, see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Why not work on resolving problems with that article rather than trying to import similar ones into this one? And if you were to ever look at anything I've ever done here, you would be well aware that I have quite an active dislike of "Criticism" sections, even more so of entire "Criticism of .." pages, and would hold to that view even in the case of pages about Fox News (genuine "controversy" pages are different, if indeed there is any genuine and notable controversy worth recording). Anyway, now I remember why I haven't been here for a while .. --Nickhh (talk) 16:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

2008-2009 Israel-Gaza Conflict[edit]

"France 2 aired a video that purported to show destruction caused by the Israel air force, but was in fact an incident from 2005, when a truck-load of Hamas explosives blew up in the city of Jabalia in Gaza Strip"

This is not an objective fact. As The Guardian and several other sources reported at the time, Hamas blamed the Israeli Air Force, claiming a military aircraft could be faintly heard before the explosion, accusing them of deliberately targeting a mortar-truck; the Israelis denied any involvement whatsoever, claiming it was an accident for which Hamas were solely to blame. Both accounts must be taken into account.[1] Dynablaster (talk) 03:20, 23 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Furthermore, Etienne Leenhardt (France 2) apologized for the news report, yes, but there is nothing in his statement that acknowledges the validity of one account over the other, only that the report he broadcast was erroneous having hastily been put together.

"France's public broadcaster was forced to apologise to viewers yesterday after it mistakenly used amateur footage shot in 2005 to illustrate a report on the current Gaza conflict."[2]

Secondary sources take Leenhardt's apology as confirmation that the blogger's version of events must also be true, and write as though it were an established fact. Let us clearly separate them, so as not to mislead readers. Dynablaster (talk) 04:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Good points - thanks for raising them. The underlying problem is that the material you highlight has been added by certain users in an attempt to discredit France 2 for POV reasons. The entire section needs to be reviewed and probably rewritten from scratch to ensure that it doesn't constitute undue weight on minor incidents and is not being used as coatrack. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:05, 23 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As described in the previous section, the incident received major coverage, world-wide. It is not a minor incident. Please review WP:AGF before repeating allegations that "the material ... has been added by certain users in an attempt to discredit France 2 for POV reasons". Canadian Monkey (talk) 22:36, 24 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Atlantic Bird 3[edit]

Is France 2 aired free-to-air on digital satellite Atlantic Bird 3? --88.77.255.194 (talk) 10:47, 25 June 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Replacing the last name of "Aleksandar M."[edit]

In the section, "2013 report on weapons smuggling from Serbia to France," the main organizer of the event is referred to as Aleksandar M. but then claims he has a cousin by the name of Nenad Mirković. Is this the same "M."? If so, i propose we change all the instances of Aleksandar M. to Aleksandar Mirković. "M." isn't very clear to begin with and I'm sure somewhere in the French sources that the real name is recounted one way or another. What do you guys think? Complete turing (talk) 01:59, 3 January 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion[edit]

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La Cinq / France 5[edit]

"Privately owned channels such as Canal+ and La Cinq (now superseded by France 5)"

No, la Cinq wasn't related to France 5 at all. Sure, La Cinquième (which later became France 5) occupied the fifth channel a few years after the end of la Cinq, but it was a wholly different project. 2A01:CB00:EB7:2500:551B:D76B:38E0:96D8 (talk) 10:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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