Saturday, January 07, 2006

The Difference Between French TV and Their Websites

I enjoy watching the TF1 and the France2 evening newscasts on their respective websites
writes Thomas W. Briggs of Fort Worth, Texas, in what turns out to be a useful reminder. They
both stream their entire broadcasts (no sports, however) after about a two-hour delay. France3 also posts all their little local newscasts, which can be entertaining around Tour de France time since the Tour is always the No. 1 local story when it comes through.

Anyway, I've noticed that the anti-American sentiment that's frequently expressed somehow does not end up in the analogue text-only articles on their websites -- or in Le Monde either. This effectively means that the nastier parts of the French slant on the news is effectively not linkable or, really, available at all to US bloggers or news services. (Now, that having been said, I did once manage via Andrew Sullivan to get the punch-line of an RFI audio-only op-ed from Andre Genestar of Paris Match fame into the New York Times: Mr. Genestar had noted the appalling revival of the Vichy-era expression "forces Anglo-Americaines" in early French news reports on the Iraq war.)

What I'm really trying to say is that French streaming video and audio is frequently way nastier and more hatefully anti-US than what you can find in text sources. You know this, I'm sure, but I'll bet not many do here in the US.

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