France24 - cultural differences

France24, the rival to BBCWorld, CNN, SKY, is now available in English in France (previously you could only get it in English on the internet in France).

BBCWorld increasingly gets on my nerves with the amount of time it gives to business and sport (now big business of course, and a useful way of keeping the masses distracted - "bread and circuses" - as Roman emperors understood).

Taking culture seriously

Not all the French are as spikey as this (see end of this post)

France24 actually has a "culture" section ! Click here:

Unfortunately the lead story (Saturday) is about Forbes magazine's "rich list" - well, France is a capitalist country too.

Physics and the physical

But on Friday a young female Indian writer was interviewed. She had written a book involving romance, but before the males go "uh huh, chick-lit" - the heroine, like the writer, is also interested in quantum physics.

She was asked why she had moved from India to Paris and she said what she liked was the way literature was taken seriously in France.

Culture in general is taken more seriously in France than the UK or US (OK, it's taken seriously in those countries too - in a business sense). Thus one has long discussion programmes on the main French TV channels, including lots of writers, philosophers and various "intellos", e.g. on France 3: "Ce Soir ou Jamais" - "Frederic Taddei ... avec ses invites, il aborde des grands themes de societe et tente de decrypter le monde actuel a travers le prisme de la culture."

Sometimes they'll discuss one theme for about an hour ! One story in France24's culture section is about the death of philosopher Baudrillard (they didn't parody his notorious piece on the first Gulf War by saying that his death hadn't really happened).

Fisk and Hersh: Journalistic heroes

France24 also has quite extended interviews with foreign journalists, e.g. with a couple of my heroes, the Brit Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh of the US. The latter covered the My Lai story during the Vietnam War, when American troops massacred hundreds of civilians. This case was only different from many others in that it got publicity, mainly because of the photos taken by the American army photographer Ron Haeberle who had accompanied Charlie Company that day and photographed everything. Just in case any Americans read this, and dismiss it as just more "anti-Americanism", please note that I am praising an American journalist, and I am also happy to note that it was also the efforts of an American Vietnam vet, Ronald Ridenhour and of Udall, a Democrat senator, which brought the story to light, AND that the event included the action of this decent, courageous American:

"NOT EVERY American soldier participated in the murder, and some tried to stop it. Lt. Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot, saw the savagery from the air and landed between American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians. He ordered his gunner to train his machine gun on the soldiers until they backed off."

http://www.counterpunch.org/allen04182003.html

American soldiers against the Iraq War

Fortunately there are still, decent, courageous soldiers in the US army, such as those recently interviewed about their objections to the Iraq war on CBS's 60 mins:

"Naval Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, who serves on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which was deployed in the Gulf during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"I'm not anti-war. I'm not a pacifist. I'm not opposed to protecting our country and defending our principles. But at the same time, as citizens it's our obligation to have a questioning attitude, you know, about policy," Hutto says,
"Just because we volunteered for the military, doesn't mean we volunteered to put our lives in unnecessary harm, and to carry out missions that are illogical and immoral," Madden adds."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/22/60minutes/main2505412_page2.shtml

Yes, it was established at Nuremburg after WWII that "I was just obeying orders" is no excuse.

More recently Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib story - which again was very powerful due to the evidence of the photos, foolishly taken by those involved.

Currently he has been writing about the US plans to attack Iran ! It's bad enough Vietnam didn't teach the Bush gang anything, but after the disaster of Iraq - to even contemplate attacking Iran ... !

http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/archives/talk/2007/March/20070302-interview-hersh.html

Robert Fisk is unbalanced - fortunately



During the France24 interview Fisk told about his meetings with Bin Laden. Later he explained his low regard for lots of American journalists, because they were too close to those in power, and tended to feel that quoting what "official sources" said was being a good journalist, as well as their tendency to identify objectivity with balance. He explained that he would not go on CNN any more because they would use 2 mins from an Israeli spokesman and then ten seconds from him to give their bias a facade of legitimacy. This confusion of balance with objectivity (i.e. the methods used to try to get to the truth - not the mid-point between differing opinions) also meant that journalists avoided taking sides or expressing their feelings about issues. But, Fisk said, in the Middle East, for example, they are not dealing with trivial matters, but the suffering of many victims and journalists ought to get angry on behalf of victims and try to tell the truth about what was happening.

Fisk said that in dealing with slave trade in the 18th century, one ought to explain this terrible trade, not balance the slaves' account with the that of the slave-ship's captain. Nor, at the end of WWII, should one balance concentration camp survivors' accounts with that of the camp commandant, i.e. one ought to report the discovery of the camps in the way that Richard Dimbleby did, in what became a classic report.

http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/talk/20070307-Interview-Robert-Fisk.html

Martha Gellhorn



Some American journalists were less interested in career prospects and ready to speak their minds and express their feelings, such as Martha Gellhorn:

"Those few weeks [in Germany in 1936] turned me into a devout anti-fascist. I had not grasped a tenth of the ugliness that pervaded Germany but decided, from disgust, that the country was now worthless. I was never coming back.
But I did, trailing after the soldiery across the bridge at Remagen in March 1945. From then until the end of the war in Europe I saw a lot of Germany. My private war aim was the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau, the first Hitler had built in 1933. Dachau was a permanent atrocity, far worse than anything I had seen in war. A prisoner skeleton shuffled into the infirmary where I was listening to Polish doctor prisoners and announced the German surrender. The same day, in a fever of horror and loathing, I fled Dachau and cadged a lift on a plane ferrying American prisoners of war out of the accursed land. In our different ways, we all swore never to set foot again on German soil; nor were we apt to forget and forgive."

http://www.granta.com/extracts/971

"The violence of French debate"

The French also tend to be quite open about their opinions and less inclined to be cautiously "balanced", cf.:

"This is often hard for visitors to realize, however, because the tenor of political conversation is so ferocious. "Americans don't understand the violence of French debate," says Ted Stanger, a former Newsweek correspondent who recently published a book, Sacrés Français, to explain to the French how Americans view them, and then followed it up with Sacrés Américains, which turns the mirror around. Both books have been best sellers, and that, along with Stanger's impeccable French, has made him the pundit du jour on Franco-American relations. He frequently appears on TV and radio and dines with the sort of people for whom le combat—intellectual argument—is a blood sport. Over rigatoni with veal and artichokes at Enoteca, a rustic Italian restaurant at the quieter end of the Marais frequented by actors from the nearby film studios, Stanger explained that at a French dinner party it's perfectly good manners for someone to "cut you off," then "go for the jugular."

http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/detail?articleId=6044&pageNumber=2

An American returns to the US from Paris with a changed view

Also here in France it is still OK to be Left (while in the US even to be "liberal" is now suspect, according to the dominant Right there), and the Left is rightly suspicious of currently dominant ideas in American society. But even some Americans feel like this, especially if they've been exposed to a European culture like that of France. Thus, Ted Stanger, while not uncritical of France, where he worked for Newsweek for some years, now obviously shares some French attitudes about the way America has changed and he didn't care much for some aspects of its current culture when he returned recently:

"Ted Stanger décrypte avec humour le système électoral diaboliquement complexe de ce pays où les lois changent d'un État à l'autre. Il raconte la patrie du dieu Dollar et des fous de Dieu ; le sexe à l'américaine où puritanisme et sexualité débridée se côtoient allègrement ; l'apocalypse gastronomique qui sévit au pays du fast-food et nous menace déjà... Anti-Américains on pro-Américains, chacun se régalera à la lecture de ce livre qui nous permet de mieux comprendre le nouvel Empire."

http://www.amazon.fr/Sacrés-Américains-Nous-Yankees-comme/dp/2070319059

As he points out in an interesting interview, America ought to get rid of the weapons in Texas, not search for non-existent WMD in Iraq, and it ought to stop being about the only "developed" country to still impose the death penalty, even on minors:

Ted Stanger: “Ce n’est pas l’Irak qu’il faut désarmer, mais le Texas… La violence est notre façon de régler les problèmes, c’est une manière de s’exprimer aussi. En France, on boit et on gueule. Aux États-Unis, on va flinguer six personnes. On a même inventé une expression pour ça ‘go postal’, après une demi-douzaine d’incidents qui ont vu des employés de la poste régler de cette manière leurs comptes avec la société”
Quelques 235 millions d’armes à en vente libre, font chaque année 34 000 morts — parmi lesquels 3 000 enfants. Lobby influent, avec ses 3,6 millions de membres, la NRA s’oppose à toute réforme allant dans le sens d’un quelconque contrôle. Tout aussi populaire, la peine de mort est en vigueur dans 38 des 50 états de la fédération. Dans 18 d’entre eux, elle peut s’exercer sur des personnes de 16 ans. “Nous sommes le seul pays développé à mettre à mort ses enfants”, assène Michael Moore dans Mike contre-attaque !..."

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/chat/0,46-0@2-3210,55-1335,0.html

Also, in the 'land of the free" they imprison TEN TIMES as many of their people as the French:

"60 000 détenus ici [France] (0,1 % de la population), 2 millions là-bas [USA](1 % de la population)".

http://blog.empyree.org/post/2108

Another American in Paris - and happy

"The French have been lamenting the incursions of "McDo" and Nike since before the first Bush presidency, but their hostility isn't personal, and it certainly isn't all-inclusive with regard to American culture. In the next moment, the dinner conversation might turn to the latest Hollywood film, which all the French guests will have seen in English, of course, because a true film buff will not tolerate dubbing."

Lee Aitken http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/detail?articleId=6044&pageNumber=2

More generally this young American journalist hadn't experienced the supposed rudeness of the French, not even in Paris:

"French froideur is often just an opening gambit. If you take offense—"What is this guy's problem?"—the air just gets chillier. But if you know how to pierce the reserve with a little joke or a gesture (a dog works nicely too), there is no limit to the help and good service you'll receive. The electrician will do a few jobs not on the repair order, the meter maid will stop writing the ticket. I've seen it happen time and again ..."

I've found the same thing; it helps if you at least try to speak the language and if you make a joke they usually respond well (British irony might not be understood, but that happens in America too :-)).

Karen was explaining to me that she finally understood why I was such a fan of the French health-care system. Her recent surgery had been "a great experience," she said. Everything happened on time. The equipment and procedures were up-to-the-minute. Plus, "the anesthesiologist sang to me as I was going under. And as he put in the IV he said, "When you wake up, you will speak perfect French!'" It is those random moments of humor and grace, even more than the formal beauty we've almost come to take for granted, that endear Paris to us. We had spent the previous months fielding panicky phone calls from the United States asking if it was "safe" to come to France. What we ask ourselves is, is it safe to leave?"

http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/detail?articleId=6044&pageNumber=6