The Local Press and Farmers' Protests in Brittany: proximity and distance in the local newspaper coverage of a social movement

Abstract

This case study analyses a violent farmers' protest in Brittany in 1998 and its coverage by the French press, especially the local press, which is very influential in western France. The study argues that the structure of the local press can be represented by the metaphor of a Filo pastry with its various levels of local, county (département in France), regional and national news sections, generating an often quite distinctive framing of the same event. The study challenges the widely accepted idea of a structural bias in press coverage against social movements. The proximity of local journalists to the protest and their typically close, sometimes personal knowledge of many of the actors combine to produce a "comprehensive", often friendly coverage of the action, as long as this does not trigger the opposition of powerful challengers in the local arena. Newspaper reporting of this protest also reveals ambiguities concerning the newsworthiness of violence, which triggers both coverage and criticism. The study suggests that local journalists are able to express a "local" public opinion. The virtually "instant" coverage of even the smallest protest actions by local news sections, moreover, challenges the alleged centralising bias reported in many studies of social movements. Based on data from the analysis of national broadsheets, these studies typically consider only the newsworthy, "visible" part of protest events, which are reported more promptly and in greater detail by local newspapers.

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