RTBF: binary to the point of blindness

The images are unfortunately always a repetition of horror, in all its banality.

For the mainstream media, the covid crisis seems already very far away. What persists, however, at RTBF is the choice of binary treatment of information. Before, one had to take the side of a State that flouted the law and attacked freedoms: the freedom to think, the freedom of medical choice, the freedom to ask for an informed debate. One had to side with vaccine techno-science, the camp of good, against the anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists, all fascists, the camp of evil.

For two years, RTBF thus handled information through the prism of good and evil, inventing for itself a moralising doxa closer to ideology than to information.

Why change a winning recipe? Binary thinking brings clicks and audiences, it seems…

Same treatment for the Ukrainian crisis

Once the Ukrainian crisis broke out, binary treatment remained the order of the day, with a crude division giving us the good Ukrainian on one side and the bad Russian on the other.

The “complicated” questions that annoy or call for nuance, such as:

• The differentiated status of Ukrainians as refugees compared with other groups: Syrians, Afghans, Libyans, …
• The Belgian State refusing to lower fuel taxes even though there is no shortage, only speculation.
• The European Commission's use of the 6-billion-euro European fund for “peace” to finance the purchase of weapons for Ukraine. You couldn't make it up! With what democratic legitimacy does the Union, which has no military remit among its powers, decide to finance weapons? Just as, yesterday, vaccines!
• Questionable communication strategies scripted by the Ukrainian authorities, showing Paris and Berlin being bombed in clips designed to influence European public opinion towards a military commitment that is extremely risky for the maintenance of world peace.
  …

There are a great many questions surrounding this conflict, and they deserve to be examined with nuance!

Feeding the binary vision at all costs

RTBF will show little interest in them. It has other fish to fry (no pun intended).
To feed its new crusade in favour of “good”: unconditional support for Ukraine. As if one were obliged to take sides! RTBF took an interest in the valiant Belgian fighters who, heeding only their courage, were leaving to fight in Ukraine for the good cause.

During its television news on Tuesday 8 March, RTBF did not hesitate to give the floor to a man from Liège about to leave … failing to take a closer look at the wall decoration in his home, which proudly displayed a poster with the logo of the Walloon Free Corps, a direct reference to the Walloon Legion, the Walloon branch of the Waffen SS during the Second World War. It is thanks to the perspicacity of viewers and internet users that there was an indignant reaction. Le Soir, never one to miss out on disinformation, had also fallen into the trap with an interview with the same “warrior”. Apparently, a quick look at the Facebook profile of the person concerned would immediately have shed light on his “warmonger” profile, the hero of the TV news.

A great fan of censorship, RTBF applied self-censorship to itself by erasing all trace of the shameful interview from its sites. Let us pass over the explanations and justifications of RTBF, which sees an “absence of perspective”. We are far from Danish or German culture, where some media did not hesitate to make a public mea culpa for their alarmist handling of the covid crisis.

A few weeks ago, RTBF saw fascist splinter groups in every demonstration for freedom during the covid crisis. Today, the same RTBF cannot spot a “real fascist” who shoves his closeness to Nazi ideology right under their noses.

Binary vision and quality information are definitely genres not to be mixed.

By Philippe Davister

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of BAM!

Photo source:
CC BY-SA 3.0, Image cropped from the original image by Guywets on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0