In France, is Dominique Strauss-Kahn “presumed innocent” until proven guilty? In fact, he is presumed guilty until proven innocent. Or worse, he is presumed guilty, until confirmed guilty since the French media usually expect courts to confirm their own “enlightened” judgment and can be extraordinarily vindictive when they don’t. Thus, a petition signed by thousands of journalists “condemning” the court that condemned the national French TV Channel Antenne II for broadcasting unsubstantiated allegations. This post is about the media treatment of the presumption of innocence.

Consider a driver who deliberately speeds and runs over a policeman in front of a crowd of witnesses in order to avoid being checked at a road block. The driver is described in the news as the “presumed” author of the policeman’s coma. The word “presumed” here is a language automatism, an adornment, a legal curlicue. There is not a shadow of a doubt that this driver‘s car hit the policeman. No matter how grotesque, the word “presumed” tends to be repeated in such situations “ad nauseaum.”

With DSK, we are in a situation where the presumption of innocence matters because the facts are not established. Despite various forms of lip service, this presumption is resolutely trampled. In a recent talk show about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, stand-up comedian Michel Boujenah expressed uneasiness about the fact that most of the journalists around him started from the premise that DSK was guilty. He reminded them that DSK had to be considered innocent until proven guilty. “Yes, yes,” said the journalists. Then they went on with their debate. To them, the presumption of innocence was an annoying contrivance, something akin to the presence of a vocal anti-racist at certain dinner parties; a presence that proves annoying since it prevents guests from cracking race jokes. The stand-up comedian reiterated his remark. He was definitely spoiling the fun. “OK,” replied one journalist, just add an “if” to everything I say. Just put my words in the conditional!” Then he resumed the discussion as if the guilt of DSK was beyond any doubt.

Ferry’s bomb

Such a contempt for the presumption of innocence serves as a background for a “public-sphere-bomb” that has just been thrown in the ongoing debate about Dominique Strauss-Kahn by the philosopher and former Minister of Education Luc Ferry.

In another talk-show watched by millions, Luc Ferry denounced a striking example of the silence observed by the French media when it comes to high political personnel, a silence that is now fashionably described as akin to Omertà, Ferry noted that no French newspaper had reported on the fact that one former French minister had been caught with young boys in a pedophilic party in Marrakesh, Morocco. Ferry added he had no proof of what he asserted. He also stated that had learned of such a scandal from a reliable source, a top-level government member whose name he did not provide.

The first and obvious response to this statement consists in seeing Ferry’s disclosure as detestable. Ferry might have spoken out of personal antagonism, out of spite, or as a form of revenge. Or, in compliance with the current mood among the members of the French journalistic establishment, Ferry would be combating the risk of Omertà by starting an inquisitorial process through an act of denunciation. If such a scenario were correct, I would unhesitatingly condemn Ferry. I know that any accused former minister could be identified in a matter of minutes. I also know that his life would be destroyed, whether the allegation is true or false. Submitted to an almost unanimous barrage of critiques, Ferry would also be required to justify his assertions in court.

Yet, this scenario does not seem convincing to me. Not only would I like to give the philosopher the benefit of the doubt, but, I have serious doubts about the meaning of his disclosure. Ferry’s carefully worded disclosure looks as if it had been supervised by a team of lawyers. Ferry does not give a name for the supposed pedophile. The high official he describes as his source remains anonymous. He insists that he has no evidence and no proof of what happened in Marrakesh. In other terms, Luc Ferry has entirely staged his public appearance as that of a rumor-mongerer. No name, no source, no proof. What game is he playing?

A fiction and a breakfast

I propose that Ferry’s “disclosure” could be a pedagogical exercise: a demonstration by a philosopher of the way the media routinely takes short-cuts and obstructs the process of justice. Ferry provides all the elements of a tragically recurring scenario. Here is a rumor without proof; a source that is not disclosed, an innuendo that precludes any possibility of refutation. In a way, Ferry’s charade expresses in a polemical form the uneasiness of the stand-up comedian.

Of course, this is my reading of Ferry’s gesture. Ferry has become a character in a story of fiction I am making up. But perhaps my fiction is not so far-fetched. Let me spell out what this fiction means. It means answering spectacle with spectacle. It means answering media traps with other media traps. It means holding in front of the media the irresistible bait of an unproven scandal. It means turning the table on a new form of inquisition that passes itself as journalism. It means pointing to the emperor’s new clothes. Ferry is using his clout as a minister and his prestige as a philosopher to hold a mirror to the French media. “You think what I just did is disgusting? How come you do it everyday? How come you do it right now?” Ferry is starting a guerrilla war. Humor can turn into a weapon. Let me conclude by appropriating an old joke.

Ferry enters a breakfast room and calls the waiter.

Ferry: “Please give me a cup of coffee, but tepid; two rolls, but stale; please also bring me a watery omelet and burned toast. Oh, and could you manage to be very, very slow?”

Waiter: “But, sir, how can you ask that? We have no such things in this hotel!”

Ferry: Oh really? Why then do you serve them everyday?”

I started to write this post at 37,000 feet, between New York and Paris, flying to see my grandson, Ludovic, and his parents Michel and Brina (my daughter). Preoccupied by the private purpose of my visit, I tried to think about recent public events and their meaning. I was looking forward to private pleasures, working on public matters.

My trip is very much a family affair, no lectures, no meetings planned with colleagues. I am not even sure we will see any sites: Paris without the Eifel Tower or the Louvre, maybe a hardware store or two as Brina and Michael are in the middle of some serious home renovations.

But as I hurtled through the sky over the Atlantic, I wondered about how the private is linked to the public, aware of the fact that generally the French and Americans, and more particularly the French and American media, have dealt with this in very different ways, revealed in recent scandals.

Americans are more likely to look for the truth of the public by examining the private. The French are more convinced that private matters are not public issues. Both have important insights and blind spots, apparent in this week’s news and in the discussions here at DC.

Gary Alan Fine welcomed the candidacy of Tim Pawlenty. Fine, who enjoys what he calls pungent political discourse of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, also recognizes the importance of serious political debate, seeing this possibility in Pawlenty. But there was another such candidate presenting serious alternatives to the Democrat’s positions, with a record of accomplishment. Many informed Republican partisans thought Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana would be an even more significant candidate. But the twice married to the same woman politician with an apparently complicated private life, chose not to run. His family, specifically his daughters, vetoed his run. Fear of public exposure of what should remain private deprived the Republicans of a candidate. Public debate and contestation has been diminished by the apparent confusion of public and private virtues.

Fine also likes scandals and humorously thanks Dominque Strauss-Kahn for providing the latest, one that radically underlines the problem of absolutely distinguishing public from private. But DSK’s scandal is particularly serious. He is charged with a most serious crime, and the French reaction to the news has been quite instructive.

First, there was denial, linked with a variety of conspiracy theories. Then, there was outrage, not directed at DSK, but at the NYC police for the perp walk. Next, there was some realization that Strauss Kahn might not just be a womanizer, but a sexual predator. This led to a series of revelations about silence, and reflections that some things left in the shadows should see the light of day, some private matters need to be exposed, and are matters of public concern, and that a general sensibility that strongly distinguishes public and private may systematically impede this.

More about the specifics of the Strauss-Kahn controversy, I hope, next week from Daniel Dayan. But for now a quick observation from Brina and Michel’s kitchen table: Talking to them, and reading the news, upon our arrival, I am convinced that the difference between the French and the American media approach to public and private will not be so great in the future.

Tim Rosenkranz’s report on Habermas’s latest public intervention also is about the relationship between public and private, in a slightly different sense of these terms. Habermas fears that the private opinion registered in “pubic opinion polling” leads to political leadership with short horizons and undermines the political significance of elections. Politicians driven by the quick shifts of public mood can’t develop serious solutions to pressing problems and these aren’t properly debated as part of the election process. While I wouldn’t categorically dismiss polling, Habermas, with Rosenkranz’s final note, shows that there are dangers, which are evident in the U.S.

A prime example: any move to address the crisis in our healthcare system leads to partisan attacks, and necessary change becomes extremely difficult. This problem has persisted for a century. “Obamacare,” a reform that resembles Republican proposals and programs in the recent past, including Mitt Romney’s great accomplishment as Governor of Massachusetts, is attacked as socialist and as pulling the plug on grandma, scaring many in the vulnerable public. The Republican program to privatize Medicare into a kind of Obamacare for the elderly is likewise attacked, becoming a key to the rising prospects for the Democrats in Congress in the next elections. The polls inform the politicians and are directed and interpreted for partisan purposes. Commitment to serious solutions to pressing problems becomes next to impossible. This is the measure of the accomplishment of health care reform thus far, which is likely to become as popular as Medicare, it seems to me, once it is fully enacted. I think this will be a story with a happy ending.

The same problem is evident in American policy towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where there are few signs of a happy ending. President Obama openly, i.e. in public, said the obvious. Any peace deal starts with the 1967 borders between Israel and the Palestinians, with mutually agreed upon land swaps. Gershon Shafir this week strongly supported this move, and suggested that a door was opened and that its now time to walk through, to actually endorse or at least not vote against a U.N. resolution recognizing an independent Palestinian state. I tend to agree with Shafir, with a strong sense that the only way Israel will survive in the long run is through a negotiated settlement pushed forward by outside parties, especially the U.S. But this is highly unlikely given the Republican attacks on even the modest step Obama took, and given the impact this is likely to have on public opinion as measured by the polls.

Just when it would be good to be bold, the American leadership will follow the polls. The politicians will hold to inflexible positions, concerned that they may be defined as being “anti-Israel.” This is a matter in which the question of who owns the polls is very important, indicated by IrisDr’s report on her experience with a group calling itself the Republican – Jewish Coalition. Obama’s sustained pro-Israel policy (for better and for worse) can be undermined by such attacks, perhaps insuring that a reasonable peace won’t be achieved. Instead of serious public deliberation about these matters by responsible parties, there are politics directed to satisfy the prejudices of private individuals and their personal fears and opinions (named public opinion).

The French are learning that the distinction between public and private is hard to sustain, and that it’s a good thing too. Sometimes it is important to critically evaluate private matters in order to make sound public decisions. The individual moral character of a political leader matters.

But we need to make a distinction between passing individual private opinions, even when collected in a public opinion poll, and legitimate public decisions and deliberations that are connected to elections and concerted political action.

The public – private distinction: we cannot live thoroughly with it, can’t live democratically without it.