The lingering media prejudice towards France's deprived suburbs
Many French media outlets continue to harbour clichéd views of life in working class areas and this in turn leads to bias in how events in the country's suburbs – often places of high immigration and poverty - are covered. Many newsroom journalists are unhappy at the persistence of such views, but say they choose to keep silent for fear of being mocked or being accused of a lack of neutrality. Yunnes Abzouz investigates.
LikeLike many people living in a working class area 'Nour' – not his real name – is angry at media coverage of the urban unrest that spread across France after the death of 17-year-old Nahel last month at the hands of the police. “To some journalists, Nahel was a criminal, his death was just another news story and the unrest which followed was simply an excuse to loot and pillage shops,” he says. Nour knows what he is talking about when it comes to understanding how sections of the media see deprived areas; he is himself a journalist on a daily regional newspaper in the south-east of the country.
