A Textbook Case: Jean-Luc Delarue's "Ça se discute"

Techniques of Manipulation on Television

A Textbook Case: Jean-Luc Delarue’s Programme “Ça se discute”

New cults, new gurus: can we all be manipulated?

19 September 2007 on France 2.

By Éric Bouzou.

See also our review of this programme

Jean-Luc Delarue, another “textbook case” in September 2010?

The term “manipulation” is not innocuous; it permeated the whole of Jean-Luc Delarue’s (JLD’s) programme, presenting the common run of mortals as a vegetative vegetable, incapable of understanding its own acts and manipulable at will provided it has been “indoctrinated” into a cult or has fallen into the hands of a guru.

The theme of manipulation is extremely delicate, and the frontier between psychological coercion and a conscious choice ought to be a subject treated with the most extreme prudence. The psychology of apostates (people who were members of a spiritual group and who turn against it), studied for example by the sociologist Brian Wilson, shows that they can very easily transform a reasoned choice followed by a disappointment (joining the group, for example) into an external manipulation, thereby allowing them no longer to feel responsible for that decision and for the disappointment that followed. JLD abundantly accredited the manipulation of the witnesses present on his set without any further form of investigation. It is by now a classic of the anti-cult discourse: the followers are all manipulated and unconscious of this manipulation; those who claim to be happy with their choice being the most severely affected.

It is astonishing, moreover, that JLD does not ask himself the question of manipulation where his own programme is concerned, since he uses its crudest tricks. In the case of a television programme, most spectators who do not wish to cross-check the information they receive often act out of laziness, or because they prefer to feed their own fears. That does not prevent one from denouncing the attempts at manipulation, and above all the attempts to drag the spectator downwards, which have every chance of succeeding. The public television service ought, for that matter, to question itself seriously about its mission when it encourages this type of programme.

1st manipulation: making people believe that social issues are being addressed.

Television has not given up treating social issues. Some are digestible, others are not, because the spectacle produced becomes more important than the subject treated. Form wins out over substance, and the choice of presenters is in keeping. Many of today’s commentators are “public amusers”, without putting into that term a necessarily pejorative connotation, rather in the sense of the English word “entertainer”. But they are there to amuse the gallery and to make the good people believe that someone is thinking along with them. They are an integral part of the show. Christophe Dechavannes in his day made a sorry attempt at the subject of cults, and JLD has already had several goes at this theme.

JLD’s facial expressions would on their own deserve a detailed analysis, so thoroughly are they the guiding thread of the atmosphere sought in the programme. It is therefore not the panellists’ reflection that carries the programme, but the producer’s script.

2nd manipulation: making people believe in a balanced programme

It is fashionable today to claim to organise so-called “balanced” debates: what it really amounts to is bringing together antagonistic forces which, with a little “luck”, will clash severely. What is more, a good social issue today has one or more victims within camera range.

The whole art of JLD consists in giving an impression of balance where a bias is evident in the treatment of the programme. That bias is the bias of the emotional, and upstream of that bias there are the ratings. JLD doubtless has his own opinions on the subject of cults, but he also has one principal objective, as indeed do most television producers: the programme must deliver the numbers. One can hardly reproach him for it, except when the promised balance is broken and tips a programme into an emotional outpouring, in which any attempt to step back is treated as an outrage against the status of the victims.

In this instance, the frenetic zapping during the programme between a sociologist’s contribution, then a victim’s feelings, then a close-up on the presenter, then a filmed report, then a psychiatrist (the inevitable duty psychiatrist) and so on… makes the debate oscillate between different incompatible levels which render the programme sterile. But this sterility is intended: nothing apart from pathos must come out of it. And everyone finds themselves dragged, willingly or by force, into that pathos.

Anne Morelli tried several times to bring the reflection back to the theme “there are double standards here”, to allow the debate to gain a little height. Those attempts were drowned in the emotional broth. Let us not even speak of the psychotherapist Baudoin Labrique, who was unable to express himself and preferred to leave the programme.

Another ingredient of the simulacrum of balance consists in setting a generality against a particular case. The “cults” (that indistinct ensemble in which all the alternative spiritual movements find themselves lumped) were presented as dens of dangerousness; the particular case would be a movement, listed until then as a “dangerous cult”, which would now enjoy the favour of the MIVILUDES. What of the hundreds of other groups, accused without proof, with which the anti-cult psychosis continues to be fed? If Madame Katz, secretary of the MIVILUDES, by this announcement is also announcing a change of mentality in that body, that is good news. While awaiting confirmation of that evolution, we refer readers to the comments we made on the latest MIVILUDES report.

3rd manipulation: taking the place of the courts

The programme was studded with filmed reports. Their objective was clearly to generate fear and to accredit the words of the witnesses (apostates or alleged victims of therapists). Most of the edited segments were garnished with superadded images of the kind seen in horror films (jerky shots, disquieting colours, disturbing background sound).

It is not a matter of casting doubt on the sufferings expressed by the people present on the set. But the suffering expressed by a person does not necessarily imply the guilt of the parties opposite. Who are, moreover, systematically absent from the programme, which rapidly turns into a popular tribunal. This way of presenting an event has a name: media lynching.

Nor is it a matter of denying that certain offences may have been committed. That point, however, is not to be dealt with on “Ça se discute”, even implicitly, but in a court of justice if necessary and, if time-barred, somewhere other than in a television show in any case.

JLD’s programme holds together only through the testimony of the victims. This status of victim is today untouchable. If JLD genuinely begins to question his “guests” and to weigh their version of the facts, he can shut up shop. No other victim will ever again take the risk of coming onto his set. That weighing is in any case not his to perform, since it ought to be done by people of pluralist expertise in a protected setting. The only way out, in an attempt to obtain a quality programme, would then be to separate completely the testimony part from the analysis and commentary part. However, the objective is not to be intelligent, but to please.

The witness

Yves Boisset was the programme’s witness; his role being to synthesise what had been heard. He has made, among other things, an intelligent documentary on the tragedy of the OTS. Nevertheless his concluding remarks are rather disconcerting. He takes up a discourse heard more and more today, which consists in saying that the application of the law is not sufficient. “Things go on” that the courts do not know how to take into account and that must be controlled. That assertion is a door thrown wide open to every abuse. A discourse which proclaims, in the name of freedom of conscience, that certain practices should not be permitted, even in full compliance with the law, is not long in violating that same freedom of conscience.

One may nevertheless grant the public authorities the right to observe this field of freedom of conscience. But they would still have to adopt a genuine approach of knowledge, an open one, in order to study the phenomenon of spiritual emergence as a whole. Now, that is not the case today, the policy of fighting cults is absurd in its present form, and it is regrettable that Mr Boisset does not perceive the inanity of the debate as it is conducted and of the programme presented by JLD. To conclude, as he did, on the dangers of manipulation without seeing that this programme was its archetype, is dispiriting.

The CICNS regularly contacts the media that take up the theme of cults to recall them to the requirements of journalistic ethics. Most have lost the taste for investigation, because business is more important than information. And that business prefers the spectacular. JLD, following a contribution from Anne Morelli pointing out that many people felt happy in their spiritual community and were never heard, replied to her that a person who was “having a blast in their cult” would surely pull in a big audience. That says it all, it is no longer enough to live normally and peacefully, one must either be miserable or be having a blast. It is time the media returned to more decency.

Jean-Luc Delarue in police custody for possession of cocaine (September 2010)

Jean-Luc Delarue has just been suspended from the airwaves by the president of France Télévisions, René Pfimlin, on account of his problems of drug addiction. For René Pfimlin: “One cannot have addictive and criminal practices and be on the air every day, sharing emotions, giving people lessons” (Paris Match)

This presenter mounted several “programmes on the theme of cults”, notably in his series “Ça se discute”, all of which were a parody of debate and an insult to intelligence.

Voyeurism and Manichaeism are good assets for the ratings, perfectly mastered by Jean-Luc Delarue and applauded by the successive presidents of France Télévisions, so long as the presenter’s criminal activities (violence and insults on an aeroplane, dubious jokes live on air (for example about Yamina Benguigui’s chest), breaches of the Labour Code (paying his employees salaries that were too low) and finally police custody with suspicion of drug trafficking) were not known or had not filtered into the mass-circulation press.

This state of affairs invites us to wonder about these new popular judges, star presenters and others, surfing on the compassionate and the emotional of which our victim-centred society is so fond (see

Le temps des victimes

by Caroline Eliacheff and Daniel Soulez Larivière). Might these judges, and those who support them, be hiding their own turpitudes by fabricating imaginary tormentors delivered up to popular vindictiveness? There is already talk of offering Jean-Luc Delarue a second chance, once he has mended his ways, but would he and his future backers then know how to offer, to those, for example, who propose an alternative reflection on the question of the new spiritualities, a second chance (or rather a first one) to demonstrate the absurdity of the French-style anti-cult fight? We are under no illusion on that point.

Eric Bouzou was born in 1958. He is an engineer. His technical career has been punctuated by encounters with people who bring alive the spiritual dimension of man. His interest in the defence of spiritual freedom led him to commit himself actively to the work of the CICNS.