Re: What do you do?

Description: An engineer who found his footing in the media.

Question: Beyond a simple title, how would you describe what you do for a living?

Transcript: In fact, I started my career as a . . . I was _____ an engineer ______ in the French school _______. Maybe you know this name, this acronym. _______. And I’ve been ______ for 10 years in various ministries serving various ministers, the last one being Foreign Economic Affairs. And after that I joined the industry for 25 years and . . . for 15 years, excuse me. Fifteen years in the space industry with a company named Matra Space, which is now part of EADS, a group which is producing the airbus you certainly know. And also with ______, which is a European satellite operator competing with Pan Am South in _______. And in the year 2000, I came to . . . I came out to the television industry. I became International Director of France TV, which is a French national broadcaster. And in 2003, I was supposed to be Chairman of _______. That’s the story. But in Euro News, I would say only the Chairman and the CEO. I’m not _________ which are . . . which is very independent, and are very proud of what they’re doing. ___________. So I’m the guy in charge of finance, development, searching money, and assuring the betterment of everybody.

Question: What is EuroNews?

Transcript: It’s fully independent, because we have 21 ________. We have 21 shows in 21 different countries. We are fully European. We are established as a French company, because you have to be established somewhere. But in fact, we are a European venture. And our 21 shows are all ______ broadcasters abiding to public service _____. And none of them has a majority. I have a core group of five, which consists of French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Swiss television. So these five broadcasters more or less constitute my board; but I am very independent myself in what I’m doing. So it’s a very . . . It’s a small, but very independent company. And my Editor in Chief _______ more independent Editor in Chief in the world. He’s a Spaniard, by the way.

Question: What is the mission of EuroNews?

Transcript: The mission was to create, I would say, a European international news channel as a counterpart to CNN International, which had a clear monopoly during the coverage of the Iraq war . . . of the Gulf War in 1991, which was a main breakthrough for CNN. So in ’92, some of the EBU members . . . EBU stands for European Broadcasting Union, which consists of 55 countries . . . some of them gathered together in order to create something which has been Euro News _______. _______ 11. Now they are 21. And the mission is creating an alternative; to create an independent European news channel. _____ languages, none national in essence. There are many other international news channels now because when Euro News was created, there were only five of them. Now I think there are 80 of them around the world. But all of them have a national origin in some sense, including CNN, BBC World, Al Jazeera, all of them have a national origin. _______ no national origin. We speak in seven languages, which means that your news consists of one video with seven soundtracks. Or you can say seven channels with the same video, which is all the same. And the way we work is very uncommon. Our seven journalists work around the same table. And they edit their own scripts, but _______ has been defined as the Editor in Chief. And so the scripts are different because they have to adapt their script to the national audience, and also to the technical features of the language. For instance, in the _____ version of Time, you can’t say as many things in German as you can in English. English is the most rapid language. And you can say only half of that of what you can say in English in German, for instance. So you can’t say the same thing. But if you go to our Internet site, which is EuroNews.net, you can compare, because all scripts are available. All videos are available. And if you have some interest for comparative literature, or comparative studies, you can compare what we say in all those languages.

Question: How is EuroNews different from traditional broadcasting?

Transcript: First of all, there are many stories broadcast by French national broadcasters which we don’t broadcast because we think it’s not of general interest. So we save the more interesting ones for the European audience, and even a larger audience. So our agenda is _______. It’s not a national agenda. So when we make the news, we pick up the best story not only in France, but also in Poland, in _______, in Italy and so on. That’s the main difference. And secondly we make it shorter, because we don’t think that an Italian would have to know about a French story as much as a French. So we make it shorter. And we make it, as much as possible, objective. So we don’t take a French lead . . . a French approach. We take an independent . . . a _______ approach, if you like. So we report about the French news as if we were a German, or Italian, or English with some . . . with some “________” we say in French. I don’t know the English word. With some “backward attitude”, if you like.

Question: Can journalists be truly objective?

Transcript: It’s always difficult, of course to be sure, to be objective. The fact that our journalists are seven around the table guarantees, in some sense, objectivity. Because if one would put too much on his side, maybe it would be prevented by the others to do it. So it’s some kind of guarantee. What I have observed in other medias is that being national, they have a national line. They have national kind of thinking. Our French competitors, and English competitors, and German competitors have their national way of thinking. And they try to approach their audience with this way of thinking. I don’t say it’s bad. I don’t say it’s _______ what we do. It’s different. Our line is different from the others, let’s say, in this way. We think there is no other broadcaster, no other news channel doing the same thing as we do. And that differentiates us from the others. There is also national. If you want to know what French think, watch a French national channel. What Germans think, watch a German national channel. And if you want to know what Arabs think, watch Al Jazeera in English, which exists already. But of course, in the course of time, you will be bored in getting only the story always from the same angle. So we try to take things from very various angles. We think it’s our particularity. For the time being, I don’t know of any other channel doing the same thing that we are doing. So I’m happy with that, and we make very good audience figures, by the way. We are very constantly improving our audience figures. And so for the first time, in June this year we overcame CNN International in Europe. We have now more than seven million viewers per week, which is ahead of CNN, BBC World, and all the other channels. So we are happy.

Question: Is the American approach to news different?

Transcript: Yes. In fact, the way CNN and Fox News report is very much, I would say, spectacular. They try to select a story which . . . try to present it in a way that’s breaking news that’s really breaking news. That’s really something which has a merit of intrigue as breaking news, and to try to make entertainment out of news. It’s clear to try to attract people and make them reflect about the event. But not all stories deserve this kind of priority our outlook, if you like. In Europe, maybe we have more of a cautious attitude to events. We try to crosscheck maybe a little bit more than the U.S. broadcasters do before presenting something as really important. And I think if you watch CNN International or Fox News International, affairs are very much Middle East affairs. Outside of Middle East, or maybe Afghanistan, of course, because of the terror, they are very much focused on that. But they don’t really cover the international political agenda. For instance, for a Pole, it’s not . . . priority one is not Middle East. It’s what happened in their own country. What kind of government are they going to have? Are they happy with Kaczynski Brothers? ________ with the Russians? All these kind of political background is not so much treated by our American competitors. It’s better treated by ______, not only because it’s in Europe, but ______ the rest of the world. I think we have more interest for political background, for historical background, and maybe less interest for “on the spot” events that our U.S. competitors have.

Question: What does that say about our respective cultures?

Transcript: I think the U.S. is more of a consumer society than Europe because our history is more conscious of the historical and political environment, more wary of what may happen in other neighboring countries. The U.S., you are like in a “happy island”, you know? So you don’t need to know so much about what is going on in the rest of the world. And as a result, tragic events like September 11th cause . . . I think September 11th has very much marked the spirits here in the U.S., but it has created some kind of monopoly in its international news. You get . . . all of what you get is related to September 11th and to the terrorism issue. And there’s not much about other international political issues. Well in Europe, of course, we didn’t have September 11th, but we had some terrorist actions as you saw recently in Scotland and in London. So there is some terrorism, so we are conscious of that. But . . . and of course, there is something, we put it on breaking news and report on that. But we know that is a difficult background. And we know that this background is not going to be _____ very rapidly. And so our political agenda is not monopolized by that. We have a more diverse approach to international news, and we try to cover more international political stories, I would say.

Question: Do business interests affect media content?

Transcript: We don’t ____ so much. In fact the first effect we sense of _____ business in the news . . . in the news business is there are more players than before. There is every year creation of new news channels, because business leaders have some interest in having their own news channel. Even Murdoch, you know, in Europe he has two. He has Sky News in the U.K., and he has the same news – Sky News Italia – in Italy. And so he’s already there. But there are other players in the U.K. and Germany, in France, in Spain. So for the time being, we still have the public broadcasters _____ their own channels. We have channels like EuroNews, which is a combination of public broadcasters. We have private channels, but we don’t feel the pressure of business news. We can’t say that, no. It was diversity _____ of the viewer. They have more things to watch. Maybe these private channels are more focused to entertainment news as you have here in the U.S. Maybe it will create a bias in this direction. But for the time being it’s not very sensible. It’s not very perceptible.

Question: Does Al Jazeera report the news, or create them?

Transcript: In fact, if you watch Euro News and Al Jazeera in English, yes. They report very much about Mid East issues. And of course, even if they pretend to be balanced, in fact it’s very much on the side of the Hamaas and Hezbollah. Even as you know the _____ of Qatar who is _____ Al Jazeera is the only one who is never charged by Al Jazeera. And it is one of the approaches which all the Arabs make to Al Jazeera, that it is so much sponsored and managed by the ______ of Qatar that it’s not completely . . . the lack of ______ is so scary. But Al Jazeera, I don’t think, is clearly promoting violence; but it shows images of violence. And the fact that they show so much, of course, encourages youths to go to this direction. As you know in Arab countries, I think 50% of the population is under 15. So at this age . . . 15, 16, 17, you are very fragile. And when you see images of Hamas use, or Hezbollah use, flags and shouting and crying, _____ create an appeal. So it’s a simple fact of presenting that _____. It’s not good for our democratic approach as a province, I would say. But that’s a fact and we have to cope with it. It’s . . . But it’s not the only news channel, by the way, in the Arab world. I don’t know if you know, but there are Arab satellites, Arab _____. There are 250 channels as a whole . . . 250 non-encrypted channels. And 25 of them pretend to be news channels, but ______. But 25 of them. So they have 25 news channels. Al Jazeera is the most known, but there is also al Arabiya, which is very well known. There is also a Lebanese one. There is a Hezbollah one, and _____, which is very, very bad in terms of presenting violence. It’s even forbidden in Europe. Now it’s the only one that is completely forbidden of broadcasting in Europe.

Question: Was American reporting skewed in the aftermath of 9/11?

Transcript: Certainly it was. I don’t remember how long it lasted, but CNN titled it “War on Terror” for a while. I suppose they don’t do it anymore now, but it lasted at least for one year, I think. And then there’s the fact that there is war on terror. It’s simple wording. Everybody understands what it is, but it creates the idea that you have to wage war in order to solve the terrorist problem, which is not conspicuous to say the least. And that there is no other possibility that the _____ have no way _____. So it’s certainly created in the U.S. the feeling that war was the only solution. And after that, of course, they had war. It was easy for ______ to wage war, since everybody thought they had to make war. Because an alternative was not presented, so I think it is the responsibility of media to ______ possibilities and ______ the one that maybe they would like, or they think would be good. And there was at the time – and I don’t know if it is the case now – a lack of alternatives in media coverage in the U.S. And I think if I can preach from my perch, your news presents such alternatives. In some way, ______ the U.S. And we are the only international news channel other than the U.S. Because the CNN you have is not CNN International. As far as I know, it’s CNN National, CNN U.S. And Fox News is very national. Euro News is the only international news channel. And so we hope we . . . We hope we have some audience in the U.S. in the future as well.

Question: Why do you think this happened?

Transcript: I didn’t make an inquiry on this subject. Certainly Mr. Woodward and . . . I don’t remember his name, but he was

And Bernstein actually could make a good inquiry on that. But I’m not an expert on American media. So I suppose that it would be part of maybe the . . . The journalists are always part of the political world; but maybe sometimes they are too close, and they don’t have enough backward attitude and reservations about what can be said by the political side. It’s always a problem when you have the media precisely in the news industry not to believe everything what the political says.

Question: How is technology changing the media?

Transcript: Everybody can get some news from the Internet. I read somewhere that in 2006, the quantity of videos which has been put on the Net represents 40,000 years of viewing. So you can imagine nobody can watch so much. So which means that the politics today is not so much to retrieve videos – to retrieve images – but to select, to filter, to check images. And which means that ______, the work is more to be sure where the news comes from, where the images come from, where the ________. So some have been trapped already. I don’t know if you know that some channels have been trapped by some images of _________ supposed to represent hunting in Iraq. And it was both caused by some ______ in Europe. I don’t know in the U.S., but Europe ______. And after checking, it appears that it was a hunting in Scotland, not only in Iraq. And it was a fake made by a Scottish _______. So it means _____ of course, there is a lot of work to check. We don’t need to send out so many journalists on the field, because there is always somebody on the field who had a few who is already there. And he makes it. He takes a picture. Everybody has a good camera now. And he puts his video on the Net, so his image is out there. What does it mean? What does it represent? So that’s where the real work is, to check. And after that to offer to the customer, to the viewer, something which is checked. That’s . . . That seems ________.

In terms of broadcasting, I think that the _____ of broadcasting, watching the TV channel, _______ will also lose interest because you have already . . . if you subscribe to digital package like cable, or digital cable, or digital satellite, you have 200, 300 channels. You can’t watch all these channels. Even the news channels are too many. So I think the future lies in video on demand and video alerts. I think if we subscribe to video alerts, and we send you a message on your mobile, alert, you will watch a video which will show you exactly what the breaking news is. I think there is much future in that. So check information and video alert on demand.

Question: Do you feel a pressure to keep up with the blogoshpere?

Transcript: At least not from my show. _______ happy ______ we have. And the audience is growing without making such concessions, I will say. So we don’t feel a need of doing that, no. The audience we have wants to have serious news, I would say. ______. We are serious, maybe boring sometimes. But at least the people who watch us, _______ population , of course. It’s two or three _______ of the population which watch news channels and no more than that. It’s some kind of elite in some sense. But the people who watch news channels want to have something serious. And so we don’t feel any need of changing our identity to get an audience.

Question: Will user-generated news transform established media?

Transcript: Most of the material which is called news by Al Jazeera ____ is local, very local. And so ______ for local news channel for local distribution. If you put your videos on Yahoo, or Google, or whatever, that may have some appeal for local, you would say; or for France, for your community. But to get to have an international value is something else, you know? It’s a challenge for a video to have some value in the international market. It has to be something very specific, very rare in some sense. So if part of this user-generated content has some value, it will be selected by some ____, by some search engines, and we will use it if it has some value. But for the time being, it’s very rare. For the time being, in fact, the best we can get from user-generated content is through traditional agencies . . . through _____ and through the__ press. They use it, they select it. And when they provide it to us, we use it.

Recorded on: 7/2/07