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Sarkozy To Axe France 24

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that the English-language news network France 24 is to be axed. The channel, which was set up to provide a French perspective on world events, will be replaced by a purely French-language network.

AFP

France 24 was launched with much fanfare back in December 2006. Now President Sarkozy wants to kill it off.

The president announced on Tuesday that it would be replaced by a new, purely French-speaking network, France Monde. The new creation is to be a combination of French-speaking broadcaster TV5, Radio France Internationale and France 24, and is expected to be set up at some point later this year. According to Sarkozy, it should be no problem to include subtitles in English, Spanish and Arabic, to present a "French vision."

The announcement sounded the death knoll for the pet project of his predecessor Jacques Chirac. France 24 was launched in December 2006 and broadcasts around the world in French, English and Arabic. The aim of the 24-hour news channel had been to offer a French alternative to global news channels like BBC World and CNN.

However, on Tuesday, Sarkozy said he was not comfortable with a French channel that broadcast in other languages. "With taxpayers' money, I am not prepared to broadcast a channel that does not speak French," Sarkozy told a press conference.

The main journalists union, the SNJ-CGT, reacted with fury to Sarkozy's announcement that his government would stop funding France 24's foreign language programming. The union's secretary general, Jean-Francois Tealdi, told Agence France Presse that the president was "confusing the mission of France 24 and RFI, which was to cover world events with a different vision from that of the Anglo-Saxon approach, and the mission of TV5 Monde, which is to provide a space for the French-speaking world."

An English-speaking member of the France 24 staff told AFP that "everyone is sad and shocked" by the news. The journalist said that if the English and Arabic speaking service disappeared, it would "give France an image of being behind the times."

smd/afp

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