Flak for French hacks

French presidental candidates stencil on the wall in Paris

French journalists should be delighted. Surveys show that three quarters of the French are interested in the presidential election. With only five weeks to go before the first round, the campaign is still very open, the main candidates have a lot of personality, and are relatively young, plus it’s been quite sunny over the past few days. But…journalists are depressed! Almost sixty per cent of French people are not satisfied with the media coverage of the campaign. To top it all, there are now TV shows with no journalists at all, where citizens can directly question to candidates. Radio France International’s Nick Champeaux is still happy though, and found out why his colleagues are a bit down in the dumps.

The task of journalists is a difficult one, first they need to come up with good questions, then they must try to force politicians to answer them. This is increasingly difficult, because the well media trained candidates, have become masters at the art of beating around the bush….Nicolas Demorand knows, he hosts France Inter‘s flagship morning programme everyday.

I had Nicolas Sarkozy on my radio show Monday morning, and I asked him: “ why do you want to create a ministry in charge of immigration and national identity?” I asked the question I think four times. And he was saying, “I am going to answer your question, just wait a moment, I just want to say something”. So I kept telling him:” ok, but just don’t forget to answer the question”. And he said “yes, I will answer shortly don’t worry”, but at the end, he never answered the question.

Politicians might get away with it because few journalists force them to answer questions. The task for a determined journalist is similar to walking a tight rope, because listeners do not like journalists who interrupt politicians. Véronique Maurus is ombudswoman with the national daily paper Le Monde.

Nicholas Demorand

The public doesn’t appreciate that at all, because then the journalist seems aggressive, and it turns in favour of the candidate who is seen as a victim.

Ségolène Royal’s special adviser Jack Lang, telling journalists about his candidates’ radio and TV appearances of the week……..Candidates need the media, and the media needs candidates. Journalists need to be fed information. They need to be kept busy, so there is something planned everyday: an off the record lunch with the candidate, a trip, a political conference, a workshop, or a press briefing. During the Jack Lang briefing I attended, journalists didn’t ask a single question about Royal’s proposals for the country. Daniel Schneidermann says that’s one of the reasons why French people are disappointed. Schneidermann hosts the weekly Programme “Arrêt sur Images”, which analyses journalistic work, on France 5 television.

We are not well informed about the stakes of the election. We know a lot about the competition, the assets of Ségolène, François, and Nicolas. We know about the books that they like, and the cakes that they like. We are bombarded with opinion polls, but apart from that we don’t learn much. The media prefer to talk about political games, manoeuvres, than about the stakes of the campaign.

The other problem, Schneidermann says, is that journalists who follow the same candidate all the time only know that candidate, and not much else.

We have asked the embedded journalists :” but do you sometimes discuss content with the candidates that you’re following, do you talk about industrial policies, unemployment?”. The answer we got was: “ oh no, we’re not experts on that”. We’re reaching a point where the journalist who is always following the trail of a candidate, is not competent enough to ask questions about his or her programme, it’s absurd!

There is a paradox, Véronique Maurus says. French people complain that the real issues are not covered, but readers of Le Monde particularly enjoy the more trivial articles about the candidate’s personalities and catty remarks.

Véronique Maurus: We are publishing entire pages called “focus”, which explain problems, and then the programme and proposals of all the different candidates. And we receive no letters about these articles, which suggests that few people read them. So people want deep analysis, but they always go for trivial stories.

The French public is increasingly demanding, and defiant. Thanks to the internet and video sites such as “you tube” they can directly access information themselves. France Inter’s Nicolas Demorand.

François Bayrou

I read hundreds of e-mails, in which listeners say: “why don’t you talk about this video on You Tube, that shows that Ségolène and Nicolas said such and such.

So you are saying that the same way that there are sixty million football coaches in France during the world cup, there are sixty million journalists during the campaign?

Yes, sixty million editorialists, maybe not sixty million journalists. But yes, people have an opinion. Now with the internet, people say “this is what I think, and I didn’t hear my point of view in your interview”, so they say”” just give us information and afterwards we’re going to say what we think about it”, and I think that’s quite new.

Analysts say that centre right candidate, François Bayrou, owes his increasing support to the fact that he himself has challenged the media. Saying journalists had already decided that Sarkozy and Royal would qualify for the second round, and complaining that he wasn’t receiving any media attention. He first complained this summer, and has been moaning about this over and over since, oddly enough, on almost every TV channel and radio Network.