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All News All the Time, And Now In French
"This channel will not be anti-American. But this channel has to discover international news with French eyes, like CNN discovers international news with American eyes," says Alain de Pouzilhac, head of news channel France 24.
(By John Ward Anderson -- The Washington Post)
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"It may sound a bit grandiose, but I think that if other worldviews were put forward, maybe something different would have happened, and lives could have been saved," he said.
Today, Chirac aides dismiss the notion that anger over Iraq gave birth to the channel.
Chirac spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said the president's interest in the project grew from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, and his belief that nations have a responsibility to correct the growing misunderstandings among cultures. The president's interest was also fueled by "the trend towards uniformity" created by globalization, Bonnafont said.
Although there may not be a huge demand for a global French news channel, Bonnafont said, supply would create the demand. "If you don't try to be present in the world in a dynamic way, then the world will ignore you," he said. "You have to show that you are somebody."
Albert Ripamonti, chief of news at France 24, said the network would pay more attention to areas of the world that it views as undercovered, such as Africa, where many countries are former French colonies. He said the channel will have a presence in dozens of countries through TF1 and France Televisions correspondents and a network of stringers. In all, France 24 is starting with about 170 journalists of 27 nationalities.
The France 24 newsroom in Issy-les-Moulineaux, just outside the Paris city limits, has now been running 24 hours a day for three weeks, trying to work out the kinks. Crammed with cameras and TV lights, plasma television screens and other electronic gizmos, it is divided exactly in half, with one side concentrating on news in French, the other in English.
When programs air, they have virtually identical content running at the same time from different ends of the newsroom. The live, 10-minute news update that airs every half-hour transforms the broadcast booth into a bilingual madhouse.
The network will have a potential reach of 80 million households in about 100 countries, Pouzilhac said. Plans are to be fully global by 2009, with the addition of a fourth, Spanish-language channel and Web site, and expanded broadcasting across North, South and Central America and Oceania, he said.
The channel began Wednesday with a streaming broadcast over the Internet. Plans call for that to end at 8:30 p.m. Paris time (2:30 p.m. EST) on Thursday, when the television signal and Internet news site will begin.
The English language channel will have about four hours a day of Arabic programming, until the Arabic station starts up next summer.
For now, Washington is the only major region in the United States that will receive France 24. It will be available to about 700,000 homes on the MHz Network, as Comcast cable channel 186, according to Frederick Thomas, MHz general manager.
Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.
