Living in France, le blog

While headlines urgently proclaim that foreigners in France will soon have the right to vote in local elections—and while right-wing types wave their baguettes in protest—the truth is that we're no closer to voting now than we were before the proposition was passed. And I thought the American law-making process was banjaxed...

It seems that Tony Parker's tenure in ASVEL green will be sadly cut short.

Zut alors. For a few glorious weeks, it really looked like the billionaire vs. millionaire pissing match that was the NBA lockout was going to last the whole season. Would've served them right.

Would've served me right, too.

The European debt crisis, personified by (but by no means limited to) the very real possibility of a collapse of modern Greece as we know it, has taken a subtle but game-changing turn.

French socialists, prepared to do whatever it takes to reclaim the presidency from Nicolas Sarkozy, have taken the brazen step of...holding a primary. Say it ain't so, François!

Gee, and I thought Facebook only used its powers for good...

Marine Le Pen's exhaustive effort to create a kinder, gentler National Front party capable of vacuuming up disgruntled ex-Sarkozyists and other moderate right-wing voters hit another snag last week, once again of the family variety: her father and former party boss Jean-marie Le Pen has dragged the far-right party into the Europe-wide discussion concerning the underlying causes of the recent massacres in Norway. And not in a nice way.

So I'm just sitting here on vacation in the good 'ol United States, minding my own business and not doing much, when one of my gracious hosts informs me that a trusted news source has just published a story about the new French ban of the words "Facebook" and "Twitter" from French public television. I didn't hear the report myself but I thought it sounded a bit odd. Odd enough, even, to get me off my very comfortable vacationing backside and look into it.

And what do we have? Yet another example of miserable international journalistic communication. It reminds me of the time that a story ran in the French press about how America had gone so politcally-correct that the spellchecker in MS Word would no longer allow people to save documents with profanity in them: another story based on something real (an optional word-processing profanity filter) yet made into something totally bogus but much more fun to sell to the locals as news.

Having not heard the initial piece of reporting I won't comment on it, but here's a) what actually happened and b) what's turning up in the English press.

The (non)-Story

France has a well-earned reputation for being a bit harsh in the Internet freedom department: while the government hasn't gone all Chinese on us or anything, France is home to numerous Internet laws that would certainly not fly under even the most fascist interpretation of the US Constitution. The Hadopi Law, France's anti-piracy legislation, is one of the toughest in the western world and is even occasionally enforced; similarly, the government attempts (mostly in vain) to squelch the premature on-line publication of information it deems chronologically sensitive, such as rolling election results that might affect (and, especially, dissuade) people who have not yet voted. Regardless of ones opinions on the subject, French governmental suspicion of the Internet as a legitimate replacement for traditional (and sometimes state-controlled) media is hardly news.

It should be no big surprise, then, that the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA), the government body that oversees this sort of thing, might not be thrilled with the growing tendency of traditional media outlets to lean more and more heavily on their own social networking sites. The ruling in question, which bans ONLY suggestions that viewers of public television programs (notably news shows) ought to visit their Facebook or Twitter sites for more information, makes the following observation:

Directing viewers or listeners to a television show's corresponding social network pages without specifically naming them is informative; however, sending them to such pages by naming the relevant social networks displays the character of an advertisement.

As public television is a taxpayer-funded service, the theory goes, its emissions ought not be party to in-show publicity for private interests; the mentioning of specific social networks is now seen as a form of "clandestine advertising" (publicité clandestine) for private entities, something that is not allowed under a 1992 ruling concerning public television and advertising.

As clearly noted in this article from Le Monde, this judgment in no way limits the use of the words "Facebook," "Twitter" or any other social network to come in the context of a news story; nor does it limit a program's right to suggest its viewers pay a visit to its unspecified social networking pages.

Is this how we roll here in the States? Clearly not. Does it make sense within the context of French legislation concerning technology and the dissemination of information in the Internet era? Absolutely. It's not fascist, communist, anti-American, anti-Anglophone, anti-freedom or anti anything else: it's just one country's way of dealing with a whole set of questions to which nobody has any good answers.

The Response

Nevertheless, this barely-perceptible adjustment to the way French public television and radio stations operate has sure captured the imagination of Frog-bashers everywhere. Here are just a few examples of allegedly-credible sources who cannot or will not do their homework:

This blog entry, published on the website of the Wall Street Journal, spends most of its peurile words suggesting that the French government is being hypocritical because its politicians—get ready for a big shock—use Facebook. What does that have to do with an anti-advertising law? Where's the hypocrisy? Does anybody read crap like that and go, "oh yeah, that's good stuff!"??

This piece in the Huffington Post, which seems to be getting some credit for "breaking" this piece of crucial news, eschews all facts of the story and goes straight for the drama jugular: French Ban Words 'Twitter' And 'Facebook' From TV, Radio. Good. A complete fabrication. Well done.

Matthew Fraser. The list goes on and on, but the most-quoted "authority" on the subject is Mr. Fraser, a Canadian/British scholar who works in Paris, writes extensively about new media and generally places himself a good bit off to the right on the political spectrum. In this issue Fraser sees what he thinks is fertile soil for some mindless French-bashing. The buzz-quote making the rounds is this:

"Facebook and Twitter are, of course, American social networks. In France, they are regarded—at least implicitly—as symbols of Anglo-Saxon global dominance—along with Apple, MTV, McDonald's, Hollywood, Disneyland, and other cultural juggernauts. That there is a deeply-rooted animosity in the French psyche towards Anglo-Saxon cultural domination cannot be disputed."

Hm. What part of this quote smells bad? The whole thing, perhaps? How does someone with Fraser's credentials and position boil down an incredibly complex issue (i.e. French attitudes towards increasingly-present Anglo-saxon material culture), filter it through a tiny, unimportant piece of legislation that is 100% consistent with a 20-year-old (and precedent-supported) French law about advertising and then make a boiler-plate statement that Rush Limbaugh would be proud of? How disappointing. If the French so resented Facebook, Twitter and the other five American entities he mentions so badly, why are they all doing so well in the French market? Without getting into the inexcusable vagaries of putting these five disparate things together (Hollywood?? Is that a private company? What about Disneyland? Does he mean Euro-Disney, the eponymous amusement park in Anahiem or the whole Walt Disney corporation? Are cheesburgers and iPods really two sides of the Anglo-Saxon cultural-assault coin? etc.), what the hell is "Anglo-Saxon cultural domination"? I don't know who Fraser hangs out with in Paris, but where I live life is far from being dominated by Anglo-Saxon anything and never will be. Perhaps he's just spent too much time in Paris, along with Nice one of France's two significant Anglophone enclaves. Wouldn't be the first time: even French Parisians can be shockingly clueless about what goes on in the rest of the country.

Is there a "deeply-rooted animosity" amongst French people, taken as a whole, towards all things Anglo-Saxon? Maybe. I don't know. (And who are French people as a whole? Fraser's collective national psyche is hardly a discernible entity....) For those of us who have spent enough time amongst the French to have an opinion, it's certainly fun to talk about and there's all sorts of evidence on both sides, but hear this, Mr. Fraser: the question is considerably more complicated than your latest sound bite and you know it. Shame on you for pandering to the ignorance of reflexive France-bashers everywhere and seizing an opportunity to needlessly drive the wedge just a tiny bit deeper, all in the interest of getting your name on the most news websites possible.

Dear loyal readers:

Sorry about April. Stuff was going on. People to see, places to go, conspiracies to undermine. But just because I stopped writing doesn't mean the French press didn't continue to turn out legions of interesting little stories that probably didn't make it to your English-language news aggregator. Here are some uncharacteristically brief highlights.

Recent events have me convinced that bi-partisan communication working towards common goals is just not on people's minds these days. And I'm not even going to bring up Mitch McConnell, because I don't live in America and I can thus go on pretending he doesn't exist.