Pave: Vingt-quatre, NOT Twenty-four

Le jour 239 de Sarko

With taxpayers' money, I am not prepared to broadcast a channel that does not speak French.

Sarko,
Président de la République,
killing Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack's legacy boondoggle
(infra)

Years in the making! Mere months in the undoing. Oh! The tears chez Quai Voltaire!

SARKOZY SCRAPS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE VERSION OF FRANCE 24 TV

PARIS January 8, 2008 (Forbes/AFX/Thomson Financial) - President Nicolas Sarkozy said France will stop funding the English-language version of round-the-clock news channel France 24, calling for a new French-only network to replace it.

Another clumsy headline. Sarko isn't scrapping just the English language version of France 24. He's scrapping all state-subsidized broadcasts not in French.

SARKOZY RE-ORGANISES FRENCH INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING

PARIS January 08, 2008 (SacredFacts/La Chaine Info) - In reply to a question from Radio France Internationale journalist Genevieve Goetzinger about the reform of foreign broadcasting, he had the following to say on La Chaine Info TV this morning:

I've worked a great deal on this subject with [Foreign Minister] Bernard Kouchner and [Culture Minister] Christine Albanel. I hope it will be as rapid as possible and definitely this year. The idea is to create a France World [France Monde] label. That is a holding company that would unite the resources of TV5, France 24 and RFI in ways still to be debated, which would enable all these networks, made up of great professionals, to broadcast a much more imposing French presence than at present.

The resources could be mutualised. We could rely on complementary networks of correspondents which are, moreover, pretty impressive: I'm thinking of RFI. We could give a new editorial identity to TV5 and we could benefit from the success of France 24. The problem is that we've got one that's well broadcast but has editorial issues, another that has no editorial issues but isn't broadcast well enough and a third that needs to rely on the other two because it's only got radio and TV's essential.

Let's see, Sarko wants to dump a state-owned news service that was tricked out from existing state-owned news services and replace it with a newer state-owned news service that will be tricked out from existing state-owned news services. Now, did we get that right? Other than dropping the polyglot service, we are hard-pressed to see the difference.

[We consult the stars.]

Ah. Yes. There is a legacy erasure for Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack -- and a legacy credit to Sarko .

There are other issues to debate and are already the subject of differences between us. We don't necessarily agree on everything. I think a public channel, France Monde, that would of course retain the identity of each of the participants but a state-owned brand can only speak French and I'm not inclined to use taxpayers' money to fund a channel that doesn't speak French. There could perfectly well be subtitles according to region - Spanish, Arab, English - to provide France's point of view. Between Al-Jazeera and its Arab point of view and CNN and its Anglo-Saxon point of view, we'd like to provide a French point of view but to do so, I'd really prefer it to be in French because providing a French vision in Arabic or English might be interesting but we'd find it hard to make ourselves understood.

If France wants to be heard, if France wants to be understood in the dominant Sino-Anglophony, well, we suggest France make the effort to competently convey her views in Chinese and English. Oh! But she does make the effort! She will subtitle her broadcasts. Ah, that special French touch [Pause.] the news as arthouse cinema.

From the get-go as an international 24/7 broadcaster France 24 was a flyweight. Bruited by France as a head-on competitor to CNN -- but obviously the emulator, as when Then-Jack christened his hobbyhorse, "CNN à la française" -- the government then only ponied up €80M for the operating budget.

Starved of realistic funding for a 24-hour news station, CII [Chaîne d'Information Internationale, scil., France 24] is due to be launched in December for transmission initially to Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Its annual budget, met by the French taxpayer, will be £50 million [€67M, later upped to €80M (USD $117M)], about an eighth of CNN's.*

It is this attempt at influence, importance, bigness on the cheap that is so French. The presumption that being French is advantage enough against CNN's established infrastructure, its massive staff, and its outsized budget, that being French qualifies any small player to step on the big player stage and make off with the audience.

What is original with France 24 is not very good. And what is not original is available from half a dozen other news feeds. So why the French government news boondoggle? Because France does not want to inform the world, France seeks a better press for France. Here is the government in its own words:

The idea of a French international news channel goes back to the early 1990s, or more precisely, to the first Gulf War, when CNN’s cameras aboard American tanks were, so to speak, the only ones to relay events.** The disagreements between the United States and France over the second Gulf War subsequently heightened the need to present the French view of international affairs.

... France 24 intends to create an image as much as an audience and is aimed at opinion-makers in Europe (from the Atlantic to the Urals), Africa and the Near and Middle East, that is to say nearly 250 million potential viewers.

You see, dear skimmer, the French, a haughtily proud people, well, they are desperate that you admire a pretty picture of France.

Valérie Fayolle, France 24 anchorwoman:

You only have to look at how CNN and others covered the suburban riots in France, which they misportrayed as a civil war, to know that another viewpoint is welcome.

A misportrayal so convincing that the French police came to believe it true.

And this:

France's [then-tourism minister during the 2005 riots], Leon Bertrand, said that the riots "risk causing a problem in the future for the tourism industry", but insisted the country remained safe for visitors and blamed foreign media for misleading the public with headlines claiming "Paris is burning".

M. Betrand made his complaint on 11.07.05, eleven days into the 21 nights of rioting and torchings in and around Paris. As we remarked at the time, Eu ... mais, M. Le Ministre, Paris, elle brûle !

Oh, BTW, guess what recent story did NOT make headlines on France 24? Click here.

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* BBC World Service, another targeted competitor, receives annual state funding of £246M (USD $482M; €328M).

** Yes, CNN and every other world news service, including the French services. What the government is here reinventing is CNN's exclusive feed from inside Baghdad. This is an example of the French perspective, French froth over facts.

PFFT (What is this?): French news in French, good enough for the French good enough for you 4 | French influence on the cheap ½ | Rayonnement français 0

Posted by Damian at January 9, 2008 11:00 PM