J'Accuse- Seminar

As mentioned in the previous blog, Emile Zola wrote J'accuse to expose the real culprits behind the Dreyfus affair. Because of his action the right hated him, but the left loved him. Maybe it was wrong to call him the origin of the power of the media today, but he was definitely a milestone; to what we know and what happens in the press today.

Emille Zola was born in Paris on the 2nd April 1840, he was the son of an engineer and his wife. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence. After his farther died Zola worked several clerical jobs, eventually moving to writing literacy columns for Cartier De Villemessamt's newspapers. In these columns his political attitudes began to show, he was very critical of Napoleon III and anti-catholic. After he wrote J'accuse he fled to England, to avoid his prison sentence, but returned to Paris after Dreyfus was pardoned; and Zola's charge was dismissed. Zola died on the 29th September 1902. Some suspected he died of carbon monoxide poising from someone stopping up his chimney, but it was never proved.

J'accuse reminds me of investigative programmes such as channel 4's dispatches and BBC's Panorama; it also reminds me of the whistle blowing sight Wikileaks. These types of platforms investigate and probe behind close doors to get to the bottom of issues. It is investigative reporting and journalism, like these sources, that challenges authority, similar to what Zola achieved. The news and media are now, arguably, the fourth estate, the first being religion (clergymen), the second being the nobility (politicians) and the third being the common people. The fourth estate of the news and media is now a powerful force within in our society, and arguably has equal if not more power than the other estates. When the fourth estate is working for good it can uncover scandals, point the finger at the guilty and challenge authority; by putting politicians or members of the police under the spotlight. For example the news and media exposed the MP expenses scandal and brought it to the public attention, this was something that had been going on for a while but as soon as public opinion was directed towards the matter, everything changed and inquests were launched and MP's were sentenced to jail. Also recently the media released footage of a peaceful protester being violently pushed over by a member of the police. It was deemed that the protester was killed unlawfully and the policeman involved is now facing a jail sentence.

However the fourth estate can mould and manipulate public opinion in a negative way and exploit and galvanise moral panics. For example the news and media can make allot of noise about Muslims and other ethnic groups and groups like hoodies, and soon public opinion turns against these groups and people start to hate these groups. When in fact it is only the extremists, of these groups, that are the ones ruining the reputation of others in the group. For example I recently saw on the front page of the Sun newspaper a headline stating "Bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed...just like his victims on 9/11 and 7/7". This is not exactly true Bin Laden had nothing to do with the attack in London on 7/7, the people who carried out the attack, at very best, were only influenced by Bin Laden. But allot of people read the Sun and soon that opinion becomes common sense and soon after that it becomes fact, even though it is not necessarily true. I think the media create and hype up these moral panics so everyone gets scared and starts buying newspapers so they can see what is going on, and as we all know bad news sells more than good news.

I think Zola, and his article J'accuse, is a major turning point in the balance of power, before no one would have accused the government so openly, but now it is common practice to challenge the government. The fourth estate, like Zola, can challenge the balance of power and take it away from the government, but is power better in the hands of the news and media? I personally think power is best in the hands of the people.

The Dreyfus affair

The Dreyfus affair is a huge miscarriage of justice, that involved sending an innocent man to, for a lack of a better word, hell, in the process exposing corruption and anti-semitism within the French army and government. Dreyfus was a Jewish captain in the French army, he was from Alsace, which is a Provence of France close to Germany. It is these factors that made him the perfect candidate for one of the most atrocious miss-uses of a justice system.

Firstly a bit of context is needed, to shed some light on how the Dreyfus affair come to be. Germany  was under the leadership of Bismarck, who wanted to unify the country. Bismarck was a good disciple of Machiavelli, he goaded France into a war. France was under the leadership of Napoleon III. Napoleon III was captured and eventually surrendered at Sedan in 1871, this was very embarrassing for the French, as the military was held in high esteem, and was apart of the identity of France, so they were disgraced. The temporary government, of France, officially surrendered at Versailles. The Germans, having defeated the French, marched into Paris; they added further insult to injury by, forcing France to pay huge reparations and demanding victory parades through the centre of Paris. France also lost the territories of Alsace and Lorraine to the Germans. During the time when the Germans, seized Paris the wealthy land owners and hierarchy of France fled. When they returned, the landowners, demanded that the people in their properties pay rent for the months they were living in Paris, suffering and struggling whilst the rich ran away. In a reaction to this The Paris commune was established in May 1871, they elected leaders and introduced social reforms, including the establishment of nurseries so woman could work and abolished night time working and separated the state and church. Marx called it "the dictatorship of the proletariat". The commune was slaughtered by the government, using the army to carry out the orders, and an estimated 20,000-30,000 people were killed, it is only an estimate because there was so much killing happening that no one could count it properly. The victims of the slaughter were mainly the working classes. Like the French revolution, the commune, although it did not last long, had a massive impact of European politics.


In the years that passed, since the Germans defeated and humiliated the French, the French wanted revenge and grew bitter towards Germany. In 1894, the French sought to make France great again, one way to do this was to build a vast overseas empire, similar to Britain's empire. During this period of revival the French were concerned about any threats to French greatness, like embarrassing scandals involving the government. They were convinced that a Jewish syndicate was conspiring against the French government; the authorities used this to deflect attention away from their mistakes. An example of this concern to French greatness is the Panama cannel scandal which involved bribes being exchanged to government officials to keep the fact that the company was in finical difficulty quiet. The bribes were handled by two Jewish business man. This was a small catalyst inflaming anti-semitism in  France. In 1894 a spy, working as a cleaning lady in the German embassy in Paris, found secret documents about the French army in a wastepaper basket, she gave them to the authorities, who looked for a Jew in the top ranks of the Military to blame it on, they chose Dreyfus because he was intelligent, a Jew and from the Alsace region. Dreyfus was tried and found guilty, in a secret trial, by the military court. He was publicly stripped of his military rank and his sword was snapped in half in front of his military colleges. No evidence from the trail saw the light of day because the army said it was to secret and could threaten national security. Dreyfus was sent to devils island, where he was chained twenty four hours a day, seven days a week; he was also in a cell in which he could only see the sky. He was not allowed to talk to anyone and after a while in this type of solitude he lost the ability to speak. After a while an officer went over the evidence and discovered the real spy was another officer called Esterhazy. The French military were so desperate to cover up the cover up that they conducted a trial for Esterhazy and he was acquitted in spite of the over whelming evidence against him, but again the military couldn't release the evidence because it was classified information, so no one could see it for themselves. At this stage of the affair Emile Zola wrote the famous article 'J'Acuse', exposing the real culprits behind the cover up. The affair split the right and the left, the right were against Dreyfus and the left were for Dreyfus. Zola became a hate figure for the fight and labelled a Jewish sympathiser, anti-Semites called for his blood; whilst people on the left praised him. Zola was tried and found guilty of libel, but he fled to London. Anti-Jewish riots erupted over France and the right called for Jews to lose their citizenship. The army started to panic a little bit, as they started to recognise the weakness in the case; so more documents were forged by an officer by the name Henry, who later slit his throat in prison when he was discovered.
A change in government brought Dreyfus back, for a second trial, because they wanted to make the right impression and differentiate themselves from the old regime. Dreyfus was a shell of a man, he was found guilty with "extenuating circumstances", which basically meant he was innocent with out admitting his was innocent, and he was sent back to Devils island. He was latter brought back and given a full pardon.

I had never heard of the Dreyfus affair before, naturally I was shocked. I could not believe this grave miscarriage of justice could of happened in modern times. But then I remember other miscarriages of Justice like the Derek Bentley case that streched from the 1950's to 1980's. Derek Bentley was a teenager who was wrongfully hanged in Britain in 1953, when capital punishment was allowed in Britain. He was later found innocent of the crime he was supposed to be guilty of and he was given a pardon in the 1980's. It was this miscarriage of justice, and the campaigning of his family, that lead to capital punishment being appolished in Britain. I was also surprised about how rife anti-semitism was in France, even to the extent that it could be argued it was worse than the Nazis. It was very interesting to learn the origin of the media becoming a recognisable force in society and becoming the fourth state. Zola used his tool of writing to stand up to the government and deny them and exposed the truth, which is arguable the truest and purest journalism there can be. Nowadays the media is always exposing scandals, the biggest one of recent times is probably the MP expenses scandal, which is something Zola probably would of been proud of.

William Cobbett and his Rural Rides

As it was said in the seminar William Cobbett was born in 1763 in Farnham, Surrey. He was taught to read and write by his father and worked on the family farm, before leaving for London. He joined the army and reached the rank of Corporal, but was branded a trouble maker and kicked out, after he tried exposing the quartermaster for stealing from the Army. In 1802 he started a newspaper, the Political Register, and would use this as a tool to wield his political opinion with in the public realm. He had several encounters with the law because of his criticisms of the government, which caused him to flee to America, but he returned to England. In 1821 he toured around Britain and record his journey in his journal and published his findings in the Political Register and a book called Rural Rides. William Cobbett died on 18th of June, 1835.

Rural Rides is a very good portrait of the countryside at the time, it's a hands approach to gathering information, to get a in depth view of what was happening around the country; in terms social, economical and political problems. It was said in the seminar that Cobbett was inspired to do because there were many people in the cities saying things about the country side and throwing wild rumours around; so Cobbett thought he would go see what is really going on.

Reading Rural rides it seems to lay the foundations for many things that we are familiar with these days. To put in context, by today's standards, you could compare it to shows like Top Gear, Grand Designs, Micheal Palin's travel documentaries and David Attenbury's documentaries. Rural Rides is travel reporting, in which someone embarks on a journey to investigate the world and go to places that normal people cant go to. These programmes allow people to experience the world from the comfort of their living room, like Rural Rides would allow people from the cities to experience the country side without leaving their taverns or coffee houses. Although it is a detailed portrayal of the countryside at the time, it is worth pointing out that Rural Rides is littered with personal opinion and bias, for example Cobbett said "All Middlesex is ugly" and "Exceedingly dull". These opinions and bias might compromise the integrity of his report.

It was also said in the lecture that Cobbet's method of journalism, is similar to foreign correspondents that feature heavily on the news these days. Foreign correspondences travel to locations all over the world, to find out what is happening there, to try and gather information first hand and report it back to London, for example. This is similar to what Cobbett was trying to achieve with his tour around Britain, bringing the countryside to the people in the cities. Another example is War correspondents that report from the front line, relaying information that other people do not have access to because they don't want to be on the front line of a War zone.

As I said earlier, Rural Rides could be compared to entertainment shows such as Top Gear and Grand Designs; although what Cobbett discovered was not really intended to be entertaining. I mean in the sense that experts test, critise, review and comment on things that the everyday man faces in everyday life. Cobbett knew allot about farming and on his travels helped farmers out. Whilst reading Rural Rides I could not help but think that Cobbett was the Jeremy Clarkson of his day; someone who knows his stuff about a certain topic, wither it be farming and politics or cars, who is not afford to criticise the government and say his piece of mind. Clarkson comments on the world in his books and offers his opinion on social, economic and political subject manner; maybe not academically all the time, but it is similar to Cobbett. For example Cobbet said "All Middlesex is ugly", and if I did not know better this could of come from Jeremy Clarkson's mouth.

Cobbett uses the term "political courage" when discussing the politicians changing their views to fit with the reformists. I like this term and my understanding of it is the "courage of acknowledging your errors" it takes a stronger will of person to admit they are wrong than to cower behind the ignorance of their mistakes. Most politicians lack this political courage as they are to scared to level with the public and hold their hands up and admit their mistakes because they are to concerned about losing voters. I personally think I would respect, and therefore be more likely to vote for an MP, who does hold his hands up and admit mistakes but tries his hardest to rectify them. An honest MP, that will be the day.

I found Rural Rides an enjoyable and informative read.