Seminar based on Dreyfus and J'accuse

The final seminar of semester 2 and indeed year 1 of the History and Context of Journalism course was based around the Dreyfus affair and J'accuse written by Emile Zola. During the seminar there were two seminar papers which were read to the group both containing well contructed opinions of the affair.The papers sparked a very long discussion about racism and how people who have different religious beliefs can be targeted as the Dreyfus affair shows as he was blamed for the scandal because he was Jewish. The group decided that this kind of racism continued after the affair with Hitler and the Nazi party targeting Jews during the First World War. One of the main areas of debate during the seminar was to what extent did journalism play a part in uncovering the Dreyfus affair and the response by the French public to Zola's article. Journalism had a major role as reporters gathered stories from the courts, the army and the public and wrote articles which were published in a number of  French newspapers and also newspapers all across Europe. This level of press coverage had an affect on the public as during the affair they began to take sides with the left wing accusing Dreyfus and the right wing supporting him and this was not only happening in France but throughout Europe.