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France 24 Goes Live
24 hour news channel goes on air tonight
7.30 GMT tonight sees the launch of France 24, France's first 24-hour global news broadcaster and what President Jacques Chirac has long seen as a vital weapon in the struggle against "Anglo-Saxon imperialism."
Nicknamed "CNN à la Française", France 24 will broadcast news in English (ow!) and French, first on the internet and from tomorrow over the airwaves.
With a young staff and a large budget (though compared to what CNN or the BBC spends, it's fairly tiny), the channel hopes to give a spin on international news "through French eyes."
What this French angle might be has been well-documented, not least by EURSOC. Indeed, what most Anglo-Saxons know about France 24 is that Chirac became determined to launch it during the build up to the war in Iraq, when he believed he wasn't getting a fair deal from the big English-language broadcasters. Time for a French perspective, he fumed, though both the reporters and the viewers of CNN and the BBC would be surprised to hear that they were pushing a pro-UK or pro-US line as the invasion approached. The Guardian has a closer look at how the channel was developed.
France 24's team, particularly its many English-speaking presenters, are keen to downplay accusations that they will be broadcasting propaganda: Nevertheless, most observers would agree that France's media industry is closer to government than that in English-speaking countries. Much of France 24's content will come from its partners, such as Agence France Presse and its parent TV stations, France Télévisions and privately owned TF1. TF1 already owns domestic 24-hour news channel LCI, "La Chaine Info".
The producers say that around 20 percent of the broadcast time will be taken up with French lifestyle items - culture, food and so on.
Sounds like an expensive state-funded version of the Travel Show: But as anyone who has lived in France will tell you, culture is politics. A discussion of French cheese or an interview with a French pop starlet is a political act whenever you believe, as many French media people do, that France's culture is constantly undermined and threatened by the fiendish Anglo-Saxons.
But still, perhaps people are making too much fuss. If people don't like France 24, they can switch off and watch the Beeb, CNN or Al-Jazeera. They can even read the blogs, if they prefer. France is a big and proud European country. Unlike its rivals, it does not have an international news service its expats can watch, or which can represent the nation in the global media. France 24 is a prestige project for France (and Chirac) - a digital version of one of Francois Mitterand's infamous monuments to himself.
In France, these things are done by the state - the BBC, too, is funded by viewers via a "TV License" tax. If anything, it's a surprise that France didn't have such a channel before.
