September 24, 2005
Katrina coverage on French TV
In case you haven't seen it yet, Nidra Poller wrote an angry and oh-so-true article about the way Katrina has been covered on French TV.
Do not miss it.
Do you know why France is never hit by hurricanes, even though she once owned Louisiana? It’s because France signed the Kyoto Protocol. Do you know why la petite Camargue in the south of France, with its famous bulls and free-range horses, was flooded twice this summer? It’s because George Bush did not sign the Kyoto Protocol.Posted by Carine at September 24, 2005 11:56 PM(...)
The downright arrogance of a French newswoman -some of them are sweet and soft as velvet, one of them belts out the news as if words were whips - scolding the whole United States of America for not having foreseen the logistical problems that would follow in the wake of Katrina, is enough to explode the temper of the most well-balanced observer on the other side of the screen. How dare they be so hateful? And so ignorant! They don’t know what they’re talking about. Non, ce n’est pas possible.
(...)
Former Newsweek correspondent Ted Stanger, an avowed Francophile, a bit shocked by the French reaction and media coverage of Katrina, asked to make an appearance on France 2. His critique was so low key, harmless, and ultimately Francophile that you might imagine he was invited deliberately to fend off the kind of screech I’ve written here. Stanger thought the French had been a tad unfair with the United States. It’s not because a country is rich and high-tech that it doesn’t need some TLC sympathy when it’s down. The blond TV headmistress was not taking it! Hmph, she said, we sent our highly skilled Red Cross teams and they were given lowly tasks. Stanger leaned over backward. The French, he opined, had missed an opportunity: since they gave America a dressing down for acting unilaterally in Iraq, they could have taken advantage of the opportunity to go multilateral when disaster struck.
Even that was too much. The sharp-tongued headmistress gave poor Ted a crocodile smile, and chomped off his head! “So? You’re saying we were wrong all down the line?” Translation? Well, it can’t really be translated. What did she mean? She meant “we didn’t do anything wrong, certainly nothing deserving of criticism, and no matter how many valid points you make, we’ll never admit we did anything wrong.”
Interesting article, I liked the comment Nidra (is that female?) made about people "too dumb to retreat to a mountain chalet" during that french heatwave (ref to the 15000 dead).
Ref the french Red Cross being given "lowly tasks" - what, you mean work? We probably had Red Cross workers from a dozen countries in the area and they all knew US Red Cross would be in decision making positions. Makes sense, since they know Americans better than outsiders. Of course I haven't seen any quotes from french RC workers, so maybe they're not the problem - for all I know, they were perfectly happy to be hauling boxes and handing out supplies.
Posted by: Jay at September 25, 2005 04:45 AMWell I guess the French would have liked you to listen to what they learned from, say, the 15,000 people dead during the heat wave.
She's perfectly right about the French arrogance. This is amazing what degree of ridicule it can reach. I think I see who's blond newswoman she's talking about. She used to be on France 3. In 2003, when the liberation of Iraq started, she always insisted on the word "Américains" to underline that they were doing something wrooooong. "Les Zzzzaméricains".
Regarding Katrina, I caught a journalist on TF1 I think, once, saying that France had offered to send help that Bush first refused, then accepted but still accepted less from France than from Germany or the UK. So it was about Iraq again. And then he added that this much-needed help coming from abroad wasn't much publicized on the media, much less by GWB (understand: they/he could have said thank you).
Posted by: Carine at September 25, 2005 10:42 AMHow many disaster response tasks are not "lowly"? Did she think perhaps that they might be invited to come and supervise?
Posted by: Doug at September 25, 2005 05:59 PMNidra didn't seem to expect that, she was only saying that the french Red Cross workers did. She was being sarcastic.
Go into a disaster area and 99.99% of the work is dirty nasty manual labor stuff. One guy holding a pencil is more than enough and we have an ample supply of pencil holders.
Posted by: Jay at September 25, 2005 07:23 PM
