Le Television du Frog

                     Chirac's New TV Network Aims to Project French Language, Clout

In 2002, as the U.S. drowned out French objections to the invasion of Iraq, President Jacques Chirac had an idea: create a global television channel to promote the Gallic point of view.

Four years later, Chirac, 74, is set to open a new front in his effort to stem his nation's declining influence in world affairs when France 24, an around-the-clock television network in French and English, goes on the air tomorrow.

The network, dubbed "CNN a la francaise'' by local newspapers, joins a long list of efforts by Chirac to counter what he calls "an omnipresence of Anglo-Saxon culture.'' He has put the national library online, set up a rival to Google Inc.'s satellite-imaging site and funded "Francophonie,'' a 49-nation group created in 1970 to spread France's language and culture.

"With Chirac, it's personal,'' said Nicolas Baverez, the author of "New World: Old France,'' a book published this year. "For him, the fight for French is a battle against Anglo-Saxon supremacy. There is also nostalgia for the time when France was a big world power.''

   Yeah, world domination by Islam, the global war on terror, the rise of a nuclear Iran, the overall decline of Europe ...those don't rise to the level of real 'battles' for Chirac. He's too busy trying to 'recapture' something that exists solely in the minds of Napoleonic Francophiles and the historically misinformed. The only war France ever won was the French Revolution ...and I wouldn't exactly call the outcome of that battle 'a victory'.

                   

              Chirac's New TV Network Aims to Project French Language, Clout

By Emma Vandore

In 2002, as the U.S. drowned out French objections to the invasion of Iraq, President Jacques Chirac had an idea: create a global television channel to promote the Gallic point of view.

Four years later, Chirac, 74, is set to open a new front in his effort to stem his nation's declining influence in world affairs when France 24, an around-the-clock television network in French and English, goes on the air tomorrow.

The network, dubbed ``CNN a la francaise'' by local newspapers, joins a long list of efforts by Chirac to counter what he calls ``an omnipresence of Anglo-Saxon culture.'' He has put the national library online, set up a rival to Google Inc.'s satellite-imaging site and funded ``Francophonie,'' a 49-nation group created in 1970 to spread France's language and culture.

``With Chirac, it's personal,'' said Nicolas Baverez, the author of ``New World: Old France,'' a book published this year. ``For him, the fight for French is a battle against Anglo-Saxon supremacy. There is also nostalgia for the time when France was a big world power.''

France 24 -- whose annual budget of 90 million euros ($120 million) is a fraction of CNN's annual budget of about $550 million -- will be jointly controlled by the state-owned France Televisions and by Societe Television Francaise 1, or TF1.

A Royal Decree

Chirac isn't the first French leader who's sought to use language and culture as political tools. King Francois I tried to knit together his realm in the 16th century by ordering that French replace Latin as the administrative language. In 1967, President Charles de Gaulle cut short a visit to Canada after creating a furor by suggesting that French-speaking Quebec secede.

``The defense of French in international institutions is a defense of diversity, because otherwise it would only be English,'' said Claire Trean, author of the 2005 book ``La Francophonie.'' ``Globalization is making the whole planet uniform. The dominant identity is the liberal American. French is struggling to keep up.''

By the year 2050, French will fall to 11th place on a list of languages spoken by the most 15 to 20 year olds, according to the British Council, which runs the U.K.'s overseas cultural centers. French is likely to trail Bengali and Malaysian, the council estimates; it figures English will be in fourth place.

Congratulations

As part of Chirac's campaign to prevent the marginalization of France and French, he lunched in Paris last month with incoming United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, reminding him of the importance of French in the UN and congratulating him on his ability to speak the language.

Not all Chirac's efforts have been so affable. He stormed out of a European Union summit this year because a French executive, Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, spoke in English.

Industry Minister Francois Loos, addressing Russian executives in English at a May conference, urged his audience not to tell his boss. ``It's forbidden for me'' to speak English in public, he said.

At a September summit of the Francophonie group in Bucharest, Chirac grimaced when Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper switched into English to congratulate the host, Romanian President Traian Basescu.

While nations comprising 710 million people are members of the Francophonie organization, there are only 175 million French speakers in the world. France's claim that a quarter of Romania's population speaks French wasn't evident at the conference: Guards and caterers in the marble halls of the Presidential Palace spoke Romanian and a smattering of English.

Listening Through Interpreters

``Bonvenou,'' Basescu said, speaking incorrectly in remarks to welcome guests. He spent the rest of the event listening through interpreters.

France still sees itself as a counterweight to U.S. dominance of world affairs, leading the opposition to the Iraq war and criticizing U.S. reluctance to sign up to global agreements such as the Kyoto environment treaty and the International Criminal Court.

In addition to France 24, Chirac is funding other pet projects to fight the encroachment of Anglo-Saxon culture.

His government spent 6 million euros to sponsor geoportail.fr, a French answer to Google Earth, which features detailed aerial maps of France. The French National Library is uploading more than 80,000 books and newspaper clippings in French in response to the 4.5 billion pages of English materials on the web from Google.

The U.S., ``because of its prosperity, enjoys a unique position, which allows diffusion of culture founded on economic strength,'' said Jean-Noel Jeanneney, the national library's president. ``Against this, we have to defend ourselves.''

Jeanneney, who said he enjoys such U.S. television series such as ``The West Wing'' and ``24,'' added that France still needs to resist ``a dominant single pole of culture.''  Link