On December 11 and 12, 2018, in Brussels, in tandem with the Global Compact for Migration, and while the migration issue was tearing apart the European Union and led to the collapse of the Belgian government, not one Belgian or European media reacted to the Josefa poster campaign: "ALL MIGRANTS". What should we make of this?
First of all, it would be right for you, the media, singularly or particularly, to think and therefore respond. But, in view of your silence – no doubt you are too preoccupied by the throes of sensationalism –, we must therefore try to answer the question ourselves.
Then we could add that social, economic or political actors have not reacted either, with rare exceptions. Is anyone still daring, curious or possibly astonished in Belgium or in Europe?
It is likely that this is not really duplicity, blindness or irresponsibility; although... It is probably more likely that you, the media as well as the aforementioned actors – with, here again, certainly authentically or freely silent exceptions –, are of an extreme and sad banality in your analyses and in the description of the facts or "realities" that you gave yourselves. As soon as one approach is "different", or one thinks "differently", or acts "differently ", nothing gets out. Are you confined to "scandalous" or "lucrative" positions due to your audience or financial and other resources?
To speak about (or to denounce) "isms" (populism, conservatism, radicalism...) proves quite easy in the sense of trying too often to maintain a dialectic of opposition. Danger?
But where are you, the "Media", in your not only moral but also physical qualities? Where are you, you the news media, when you censor, after reflecting on it or not, a campaign like Josefa’s, at the heart of a historical news about the phenomenon of migration? At the heart of a political and societal "war" in Europe with regard to migration issues?
Why? What games are you playing? Beyond yours, whose interests are you protecting?
It is to be feared that, deliberately or not (either way, there is cause for serious concern), you may support a "doctrinaire approach", namely yours, fertilized or fed by the media "Eros". For example, why did you take a fiendish delight in putting on page one 5 topless women confronting the police in Paris in December? And are you sure you know how to weigh up the message and the consequences of such a provocative act!
So? Given a proven (or not) duplicity, a real blindness (e.g. the Josefa campaign), or a possible irresponsibility, do you still have enough boldness to let yourselves be challenged by Josefa: ALL MIGRANTS?
Let's still hope that you will jolted, as if you were undergoing a (constrained or free) migration of your body and soul, into contributing through the media to the present and future in Europe, in Belgium in particular.
Gilbert
