How Did France Lose Values in the Crisis With Algeria?

France has lost all that remains of its so-called values, amid the escalating crisis with Algeria. It has even reached the point of squandering a value that France has always criticized other countries for not respecting it, which is the value of “freedom of expression and the press”, and the high professional ethics associated with it, in a scene that confirms the state of decadence that the cradle of the revolution of lost freedoms has reached.
The hero in this scene is the French Press Agency “Agence France Press”, a public body according to French privacy. However, this agency considered the official media arm of the French state, did not guarantee the most basic rights of the French citizens to access free and fair media, as long as it is related to highlighting “arrogance” in dealing with Algeria.
In a video on the French Press Agency’s YouTube account, “Agence France Press” omitted the most important part of the official spokesperson for the French government, Sophie Primas’ statement on Wednesday regarding the French-Algerian crisis about the authority which has exclusive powers to manage relations with Algeria.
Sophie Primas stressed in her statement that both the French presidency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are the only institutions authorized to handle this file, in a resounding slap in the face to the Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, who never misses an opportunity to further fuel the crisis with Algeria.
The AFP video clip started directly from the statement that followed the Interior Minister’s neutralization of the crisis with Algeria, with a deliberate intention to highlight that the escalation in bilateral relations was caused by Algeria, in an act that lacks professional ethics, as it engaged in media deception, by trying to cover up the scandalous actions and practices of the Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau.
The incident of the French government spokesperson’s video was not the first scandal in the French media, as it was preceded by another scandal, represented by the request of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, to visit Algeria to address the crisis, but the majority of the French media ignored this invitation, which Barrot repeated four times while focusing on talking about “responding to Algeria”, in an attempt to pour more oil on the fire of the crisis.
What Agence France-Presse did is a scandal by all standards, because it is a public media, and not just a newspaper or channel placed at the disposal of a far-right political movement, as is the case with the daily “Le Figaro” and its derivatives, or the magazine “Marianne”, or the Tv channel “C News”, which in its anti-Algerian positions has gone beyond the extreme right, especially when the Algeria-obsessed Pascal Praud is the orchestrator.
Although the practices of the French media in the last few months have become similar in managing the crisis with Algeria, as if it were managed by one editor-in-chief, the responsibility for the moral lapse of Agence France-Presse is greater, because its systematic media misinformation has gone beyond the French space to the world, given that it is one of the largest advertising agencies in the world.
This data indicates that the escalating crisis between Algeria and France is being managed by the far-right movement, through its control of the media arsenal, such that this control did not stop at the private media, but extended to the public media, to the point that the French people became unable to access the official discourse of their country’s officials, and that they only receive what the far-right wants to pass on to reach their ears, which is a dangerous development that puts France itself at stake.
According to observers, French President Macron has become unable to manage the French state since he lost the last legislative elections and was forced to make complex alliances that brought the right into the government, in the form of Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, whose peculiarity lies in his belonging to the religious right, which is more dangerous than the far right, as he is managing the crisis with Algeria from the standpoint of a civilizational conflict, with Muslims and Christians on both sides.
One of Macron’s weaknesses is his inability to intervene to stop his interior minister from escalating the crisis with Algeria, for fear of collapsing his fragile alliance, as evidenced by the fact that despite the crises he created with Algeria, he maintained his ministerial portfolio inherited from the fallen government of Michel Barnier to the current government of François Bayrou.
Observers believe that the efforts of the far right through its media mouthpieces are to undermine any possible rapprochement between the two countries, especially since Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot has prepared a private plane to visit Algeria next week, and all that remains is to receive the green light. However, the problem lies in the fact that France has not done anything to correct its mistakes.