/ 11 December 2006

News through French eyes

In a slick, glass television studio in an office block on the southern outskirts of Paris, a new front in the war on ”Anglo-Saxon” cultural imperialism opened up recently. President Jacques Chirac’s decade-old dream of a ”CNN à la Francaise” to rival BBC World and United States 24-hour news channels is finally to launch after years of wrangling and in-fighting, promising a revolution in world news.

France 24 seeks to report international news ”through French eyes”. Not only will it offer a French perspective on world events from the Middle East to Madagascar, it also aims to reflect a certain French art de vivre, or way of life. It will explain the news with a favourite of French TV: the argumentative debate show in which philosophers in corduroy battle on current affairs. Dry runs have included topics from Rwanda to the plummeting fortunes of the French rugby team.

At least 20% of the programming will focus on culture and lifestyle, embracing everything from world museums to cuisine, fashion and French chocolate. It will broadcast simultaneously on two channels, in English and French. But broadcasting in English will not dilute the French ethos. Station executives hope the English debate shows will be even more heated than the French. Broadcasts in Arabic and Spanish will follow at later dates.

The idea of a French 24-hour news channel was first dreamed up when Chirac was prime minister in the late 1980s and became one of his election pledges for the presidency in 2002. The following year, when Chirac tried to slow the US drive to war in Iraq and some media in the US and Britain mocked his efforts, the need for a news channel with a French voice gained currency. Chirac now wants to launch it as part of the president’s legacy of projects that continue France’s struggle against the global dominance of the US. Earlier this year he unveiled plans for a Franco-German search engine to compete with Google and Yahoo, called Quaero, Latin for ”I search”. It was quickly dubbed ”Ask Chirac”.

But, although the ageing president will launch France 24 at a gala in Paris’s Tuileries Gardens, the station’s chief executive, Alain de Pouzilhac, is determined not to let it become ”Chirac TV”. ”We have public money but we are an independent channel,” he told The Guardian. Nor will it be a vehicle for the centre-right presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been accused of being too close to TV stations. ”I know Nicolas very well. I don’t believe we will have a problem with that,” Pouzilhac added.

The channel is aiming at a similar number of viewers to al-Jazeera’s English service, 75-million households in more than 90 countries, describing itself as a ”third way” between the Qatar-based station and CNN.

But its birth has not been smooth. It is an unprecedented partnership between France Televisions, the country’s public broadcaster, and TF1, one of Europe’s largest private TV channels, two groups that are normally rivals. Union protests and management disagreements have abounded — even the channel’s name, pronounced France vingt-quatre, was hotly contested. Some French politicians have voiced fears that the station couldn’t generate the funds to compete internationally. Francois Rochebloine, of the centrist UDF, called it an ”uncertain bet”, warning that the taxpayer could have to pay for it twice, once in the licence fee and again in a satellite or cable subscription.

France 24’s images will largely come from its parent TV stations as well as other partners such as AFP and Radio France International, prompting allegations that it will just be a round-up of other channels’ content. With a team of 170 journalists of an average age of 30 and public funding of â,¬86-million for the first year, France 24 is dwarfed by its competitors. CNN has a budget of â,¬1,2-billion and a staff of 4 000.

But, at its headquarters, journalists say the station will influence world politics. Mark Owen, formerly of Granada TV, who will present the English morning news bulletins and debate show, said: ”Take the conflict in Lebanon … If Chirac’s call for a ceasefire — which didn’t even make BBC or CNN — had been reported earlier, it could have brought about an earlier resolution of the conflict. That was a story calling out for a French angle, given the historic links to Lebanon.”

The France 24 website launched on Wednesday evening and the station went live on Thursday. There will be a 10-minute news bulletin each half hour and in between a series of magazines with topics including ”humanitarian affairs”, lifestyle, culture and a monthly show on ”economic intelligence”.

Outside the glitzy building, the critical reaction has been favourable. Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Centre on the United States, said: ”France didn’t have an international news channel to compete with many countries that have. What is remarkable is that it has taken such a long time to come about.” — Â