Ben Ali Ali Falui diet you say? Yes, it is certain, but the boots are always squatting the terrain … especially since almost all of the dictator’s old vassals, and to redeem themselves, metamorphose into poor victims or scapegoat of the old regime and the Trabelsi clan.
A “press conference”, if we can call it like this, took place last Wednesday in the premises of the Cactus production house.
Long shunned by the owner of the premises, namely Sami Fehri, the journalists found themselves trapped. In reality, the press conference turned out to be the recording of a television program that “sir” was preparing for his new TV channel … Nothing had prepared us for this, and surely not the fax we received!
A very… Fehri one man show!
Since it is “cactus” and that a cactus stings, one wonders which fly has stung Sami Fehri, he who has always ignored the (real) journalists, to descend to earth and invite them to his premises. Was he going to do like all those who claim to have been manipulated by the Old Regime and say to himself wrongly? Or did he intend to publicly announce his mea culpa in order to be forgiven? The reality was quite different.
The owner of Cactus gave the impression of being in all his states: disturbed, unstable, anxious; An image that is not the one that corresponded to a man who was said to be too sure of himself, even haughty.
The journalists were oriented towards the conference, a studio with cameras everywhere, and were installed in the front row, place of honor … Behind them, the cactus staff was where the audience had to be put. The show must go on. Projectors, giant screens, ultra sophisticated materials, everything was in place … For a simple press conference, remember!
Sami Fehri embarked on a long and pompous verbiage. Leading course, long tirade, monologue or television show? We no longer knew what we were dealing with. He monopolized speech, not taking into account the reactions of journalists who wondered, over time, the reason for their presence. He chained with a frantic rhythm and disproportionate his long speech, when at the start, he had asked journalists how they wanted to proceed. The objective of this long debate, which he lives alone, obviously, was to deny all the accusations made against him, to proclaim his innocence loudly as to the shenanigans and privileges from which he benefited from the time of the former dictator.
He asked himself the questions he answered. We, journalists, were in fact, only spectators in front of a “televised” show, just trinkets in the decor …
Media manipulation and journalistic dissatisfaction
For 5 and a half hours non-stop, Sami Fehri did not stop perish, give details and descriptions to the Balzac! And the height of irony, its staff applauded each time that their boss was justified, to believe that we were still in the era of Ben Ali, and say that the employees have not been paid for two months now …
Getting into account the Burlesque comedy in which they were both spectators and actors, some of us rebelled against this “conference” of which Sami Fehri made an unhealthy purgatory and many were indignant that this supposedly repentant uses people of the pen as a means to achieve his ends and as a vector of his new propaganda: advertising for his new channel.
Thus, he wanted to manipulate us to make a program with us without even asking us permission, and launching his new TV channel with images of this program running in a loop and showing around thirty Tunisian journalists in the image. Has he decided this to show the world that Tunisian journalists support him? It will be a Machiavellian manipulation. One also wonders where the funds come from for the launch of this new channel, while Sami Fehri played the mourners on his frozen accounts, and on the fact that he was mowing … For any excuse on the recording without the knowledge of journalists, the boss of Cactus continued to cackle by declaring: “It is that I am not used to press conferences. I don’t know how to do it! ”.
Would he have forgotten that certain professional and moral values do not sell in flea markets? Times have changed, or there are those who forget that the era of privileges and plots is indeed over …
Melek Lakdar-Tunis-Hebdo (n ° 1889, from March 21 to 27, 2011)
