1914-1918 : la presse toulousaine face au discours dominant

Abstract

1914-1918 : The Toulouse Press and Dominant Discourse. From the summer of 1914 on, the world of the French press reflected on the question of its own function in the context of total war. A consensus emerged uniting journalists and politicians around the conception of a press perceived as the fundamental support for national confidence. A dominant discourse, heavily tinted with chauvinism, imposed itself within the mediatic scene. As the war went on, however, this dominant discourse tended to erode. Less consensual texts, sometimes caustic, appeared according to a process whose analysis through the example of Toulouse’s newspapers, underlines the complexity of the question of the degree of adhesion of French newspapers to the efforts towards the moral mobilization of the population. If some remain the self satisfied agents of national propaganda, others advanced progressively towards more truthful reporting in line with their own perceptions of the war’s realities.