France 24 Responds to Sarkozy Proposals

PARIS, January 11: The
one-year-old international news channel France 24 is opposing President Nicolas
Sarkozy’s plans to scrap the service’s English and Arabic feeds in order to
operate solely in French, calling the proposed move “senseless.”

Earlier this week, Sarkozy
unveiled some drastic proposals for France’s media market, which included
ditching France 24’s English- and Arabic-language feeds. Sarkozy proposed that
France 24, Radio France Internationale and TV5 pool their resources to create
France Monde, which would operate solely in the French language. “With
taxpayers’ money, I am not prepared to broadcast a channel that does not speak
French,” he said.

This a reversal from the
policy of his predecessor—it was Jacques Chirac who proposed the creation
of France 24 as an alternative to CNN and BBC on the international news
circuit. The channel recently celebrated its one-year anniversary and currently
broadcasts in three languages: French, English and Arabic.

The channel said in a
statement: “We are not opposed to a consolidation with other French international
services such as Radio France Internationale and TV5. We are fully aware of the
need for a rationalization of the three channels, economically and
journalistically. What we do oppose is the forsaking of the whole project as it
was originally intended, and the senselessness of this change.”

In response to Sarkozy’s statement that taxpayers should not finance a
service that operates in languages other than French, the channel said: “Agence
France Presse (AFP) and Radio France Internationale (RFI), both very
well-appreciated institutions in the French multilingual media landscape, are
both funded by French taxpayers and yet work in several languages. Unless one
considers a multilingual television channel and website (as is the case with
France 24) as inferior media models, we don’t see why our company should suffer
from this contradictory message, which seems in clear opposition to the modern
approach advocated by the French government and the President himself.”

The statement concluded: “France 24 deserves neither such contempt and
nor such hasty treatment, having proven time and again its independence, its
creativity, its results and, above all, its relevance in today’s world.”

—By Mansha Daswani