VLOG - Blog Review: Politics Moving Away From Television.

Equity in Television Coverage - Part 2: Equity/Equality.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan is the founder of France Arise, a Gaullist eurosceptic movement, and at the moment, he is frustrated. TF1, the private television channel with the most national audience share (19.3% in February 2017 according to Mediametrie), didn't invite him to their big debate due to take place on 20th March. The programme will feature Jean- Luc Melanchon (Front de Gauche (Left Front), far-left), Emmanuel Macron (En Marche! (Forward!), centre), Benoit Hamon (Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party), left-wing), Francois Fillon (Les Republicains (The Republicans), right-wing) and Marine Le Pen (Front National (National Front), far-right). Dupont-Aignan currently represents 2% of the intentions of vote for the first round of the presidential elections on 23rd April, as shown below:

Polls calculated by Linternaute.com

Dupont-Aignan decided to complain by sending a letter to the CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel) Superior Council of Audiovisual Content)). Olivier Schrameck is the president, to whom this letter is addressed. It was published on lejdd.fr by Arnaud Focraud, and my translation is shown below:

Mr Olivier SCHRAMECK

President

CSA

[Address]

Registered letter

Dear President,

After analysing the time of intervention of various political personalities between 1st February to 5th March 2017, and despite many reminders to the CSA, the equity in this presidential election is absolutely not respected.

During the last regional elections, France Arise obtained 3.81% of votes, which is nearly as many as the Left Party (Front de Gauche) and the Green Party (Europe Ecologie les Verts), yet, with a time of 9 hours and 48 minutes on television dedicated to my candidacy, clearly this isn't fair.

This equity, which is based in part on the last regional elections, should oblige television channels to dedicate twice as much time to my candidacy onscreen.

With this in mind, I ask you to act as quickly as possible concerning this scandalous imbalance between the different candidates.

I am conscious that the CSA, which you preside, does everything in its power to preserve equity in the media, which is essential for the smooth democratic running of our politics, and I would like to thank you in advance for the reminders already in place.

We are now 41 days from the 1st round of the presidential elections. 53% of the French population, according to the latest polls, have not yet decided who they will vote for. The respect of equity is a necessity for the smooth running of this presidential election runs smoothly. It is a matter of respect of French voters.

Yours sincerely,

Nicolas DUPONT-AIGNAN

Essonne Deputy

President of France Arise

Presidential Election Candidate

According to Focraud and the French-Press Agency (L'Agence France Presse), Dupont-Aigan is right. Francois Fillon is covered a lot more than his opponents. Here is a statistic of how many hours each candidates has been on air so far on radio and television, according to the CSA:

#Presidentielle2017 Un oeil sur le temps de parole des candidats entre le 1er février et le 5 mars, décompté par le CSA #AFP pic.twitter.com/l5vJCvMWKT

— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) 10 March 2017

The CSA reacted to this. In a press release on 8th March 2017, they stated: "The Council noticed that the speaking time allocated on television and radio to Francois Fillon was abnormally high. We are conscious however of the particular media coverage condition associated to this campaign and this candidate". This statement reveals that although Fillon is everywhere in the media, a lot of this coverage is because of the current investigation he is in for misuse of public funds (Penelope Gate).

Sources:
http://www.csa.fr/Television/Le-suivi-des-programmes/Le-pluralisme-politique-et-les-campagnes-electorales/L-election-presidentielle-2017
http://www.csa.fr/Television/Le-suivi-des-programmes/Le-pluralisme-politique-et-les-campagnes-electorales/Le-pluralisme-en-periode-electorale
http://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/Dupont-Aignan-en-a-marre-d-etre-rejete-853448

Sputnik: The Outside Player Financed by Russia.

As we get closer to the french elections, I need to write about the foreign players who try and influence the national debate. Sputnik is a multimedia website, completely financed by Russia (available in both French (https://fr.sputniknews.com/) and English (https://sputniknews.com/).

Sputnik website available in French at fr.sputniknews.com

The name is a reference to the satellite sent in space by the Soviet Union in 1957, during the race for the conquest of space between USSR and the United States. According to Arte, a French television channel, "373 million euros were unlocked [in 2015] to finance the foreign content of Rossia Segodnia, the agency that controls Sputnik" (translated from French). Today, Sputnik has a Facebook page for France called "Sputnik France" with more than 270 000 likes, and their slogan is: "Nous dévoilons ce dont les autres ne parlent pas" ("We reveal what others don't talk about").  

Yesterday, C Politique, a political programme that airs every Sunday evening on France 5, broadcast a report about Sputnik. The team was the first to be allowed to investigate Sputnik's offices in Paris, as long as they kept their location secret. The report criticises how bias Sputnik is. It includes interviews such as one with Francoise Dauce, specialist in Russian media, who claims that Sputnik "contains elements of reporting that are similar to propaganda". Rudy Reichstad, founder of a blog called the Observatory of Conservationism, claims that "[Sputnik]'s aim is not to inform the population, their aim is to influence the political opinion of the public". After this report, Sputnik fired back at France 5 in two articles entitled "France 5 attacks Sputnik but mixes up its accusations" and "When France 5 doesn't verify its information".

In this article The Independent, Emmanuel Macron, leader of movement "En Marche" and French presidential candidate, is reported to be attacked by media controlled by Russia: "Mr Macron has been the target of false reports spread by state-controlled media, including Russia Today and Sputnik".

I want to emphasise two points. First, television acts as a regulator of information which I believe is necessary to our democracy. Sources from the external media are not regulated like television, and this freedom can become a way of having unbalanced arguments. This is even more true for the younger individuals. Reichstad says "The younger generation, which gets its information mainly on the Internet and don't necessarily distinguish true from false, is permeable to conspiracy". 

Sources:

http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/russie/video-c-politique-a-enquete-sur-le-media-russe-sputnik-en-france_2093809.html

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/rue89/rue89-medias/20150202.RUE7710/sputnik-l-arme-de-propagande-russe-arrive-en-france.html

http://info.arte.tv/fr/sputnik-la-propagande-russe-en-orbite
http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/03/11/rudy-reichstadt-une-vision-du-monde-de-plus-en-plus-paranoiaque_1439154
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/emmanuel-macron-russia-le-pen-en-march-french-elections-cyber-attacks-fake-news-a7578011.html

YouTube, a Useful Tool for Politics?

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the presidential candidate of the political party "Front de Gauche" ("Unsubmissive France"). This party was founded in February 2016, and has a left-wing populist ideology.  What makes the candidate so interesting is his use of the latest technologies. Currently, he owns a YouTube channel with 228 000 subscribers (https://www.youtube.com/user/PlaceauPeuple). To give you an idea of what this represents, Francois Fillon, head of the right wing party, has 4 608 subscribers. This makes him the most subscribed political runner in France. His channel is increasingly popular (only 40 000 subscribers in October 2016). This is a graph showing the additional views and subscribers he gets per months:

Youtube channel statistic for PlaceauPeuple (Melanchon) on SocialBlade
Total additional views per month
Total additional subs per month

In his videos, Mélanchon encourages viewers to subscribe, and like his content. Here is en extract for his one of his videos five days ago (subtitled in English):

His campaign director, Manuel Bompard, describes the advantage of the medium:

It's a medium where we can share our opinions, with a framework that is not biased to journalistic treatment. [...] For us, it has never been a gadget to be popular, but rather a tool that offers a lot more opportunities to do politics. (Leloup, 2016)

Sources:
https://qz.com/903417/french-presidential-candidate-jean-luc-melenchon-kicked-off-his-campaign-by-hologram/
http://www.lepoint.fr/presidentielle/l-hologramme-bluffant-de-jean-luc-melenchon-05-02-2017-2102605_3121.php
http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2016/12/28/le-candidat-melenchon-creve-l-ecran-sur-youtube_5054714_823448.html

Hugo Décrypte - Politics for a Young Audience on YouTube.

Thumbnail from Hugo Decodes the Presidentials - Education

Hugo Travers is a 19 year old politics student who owns a YouTube channel called Hugo Décrypte (Hugo Decodes). It has more than 100 000 subscribers, and aims to explain politics to a younger audience. His videos offer explanations on the most recent political events - "5 minutes to explain the Fillon Affair", "5 minutes to understand the refugee crisis, "5 minutes to describe the state of emergency" etc. It also includes interviews with politicians, such as Jean-François Copé and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (Les Républicains), Benoit Hamon and François de Rugy (Socialist Party) etc.

His aim is to make politics accessible to a younger audience, often neglected by traditional media as the subject is considered complex and not very visual. He states: "I think back to my sister, who is interested in the news but finds that the media doesn't take enough time to reexplain the context of a certain situation [...] video is a good way of making the information simple and accessible to interest young people on up-to-date topics". His most recent videos have been made in partnership with Le Monde (lemonde.fr), one of the most prominent French newspapers out there.

Statistics show that video platforms such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo etc. are increasingly popular amongst young audiences. In a study from 3rd March 2017, Mediametrie analyses the audience that watches online videos. In January 2017, 30.4 million people have watched at least one video on a computer screen, which represents 55% of the French population. It found that people between 15 to 34 years old watch an average of 7 hours 27 minutes per month, which is 2 hours and 10 minutes more than the general average.

This strong appeal to young audiences is of interest to television channels. YouTube has become competitor since its a platform that offers audiovisual content which rivals with what's on television. How should TV channels deal with this type of competition? Hugo Travers was given the opportunity to bring his content to TV with LCI, a continuous (and rather unpopular) information channel owned by TF1:

1/2#nouveaute#LCI

Bienvenue @HugoTravers qui nous proposera désormais ses décryptages et ses interviews sur @LCI ts les dimanches matin pic.twitter.com/J4LzJYqtzM

— TF1 Pro (@TF1Pro) 23 February 2017

Translation: Welcome Hugo Travers, who will offer us his decoding and interviews on LCI every Sunday morning.

Is this a way of containing the YouTube threat? Will the audience follow Hugo to LCI? I seriously doubt it...

Sources:

http://jactiv.ouest-france.fr/ils-sactivent/spotted/seulement-19-ans-hugo-decrypte-lactualite-sur-youtube-62090

http://www.lemondedesados.fr/

http://www.lemonde.fr/
http://www.lci.fr/sujet/hugo-decrypte/

Equity in Television Coverage - Part 1: The Regulation.

In this article from the newspaper Le Point, Marine Le Pen accuses the media of advantaging Emmanuel Macron's campaign in terms of coverage. She claims: "It is urgent that the media stops treating the presidential campaign unfairly, and sticks to the ethic rules and democratic principles. ("Il est urgent que le traitement médiatique de la campagne cesse d'être aussi peu conforme aux règles fondamentales de la déontologie et aux principes démocratiques. Ce sont des millions d'électeurs qui sont ainsi victimes de cette absence totale de neutralité"). Today, I want to take a look at what these rules are, and who controls them. 

The CSA (Superior Council of Audiovisual Content (Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel)) regulates the media in France since its creation in 1989 (similar to Ofcom in the UK).

The Superior Council of Audiovisual Content Logo

According to the regulations on the CSA website, there are three regulation stages that must be respected during these 2017 presidential elections (based on the freedom of communication law of September 1986). 

This is a visual explanation from their website:

First stage until 1st February 2017:  Equity for the speaking time and the time on air- The candidates and their supports are allowed a certain amount of time dependent on two factors: the weight that they represent (usually determined by how the party/candidate did at the last elections he participated in) and their campaign activity (meetings, participation in debates etc.)

Second stage from 20th/21st March: Same Equity principle - Publication of the official presidential candidates by the French Constitutional Council. The equity principle remains.

Third stage from the 10th April until the 7th May: Equality - The candidates are allocated an equal amount of time on air when the official presidential race has started (2001-213 article 15, 8th March 2001).

The CSA published a white paper on 10th September 2015, advising some changes to be made to the regulation of television after the 2012 (presidential) and 2014 (municipal) elections. One of the major differences applies to the second stage. Before 2017 elections, the speaking time was based on a equality principle instead of an equity one. The television channels, worried that they wouldn't be able to respect this equality, gave less time to all of the candidates, which led to a strong decrease in the overall speaking time for politicians.

Regulating politics on television is essential, but as we can see, it can also become detrimental if the rules interfere with the purpose of television, which is to inform the public by broadcasting the candidates' interventions in the fairest way possible.

Sources:
http://www.csa.fr/
http://www.csa.fr/Television/Le-suivi-des-programmes/Le-pluralisme-politique-et-les-campagnes-electorales/Le-pluralisme-en-periode-electorale
http://www.lepoint.fr/politique/medias-emmanuel-macron-est-enormement-avantage-denonce-le-pen-22-02-2017-2106771_20.php
http://www.csa.fr/Espace-Presse/Communiques-de-presse/Propositions-du-Conseil-superieur-de-l-audiovisuel-relatives-au-principe-de-pluralisme-politique-dans-les-medias-audiovisuels-en-periode-electorale

Survey: Our Experience of Politics in the Media.

I conducted a survey on people's opinion when it comes to television and politics. It has a total of 33 participants, with 54% male and 46% female. The majority of the survey participants live in France (21 participants out of 330. Although the age range is quite varied: 14 individuals between 18 and 25, 14 over 50, it would have benefited from answers in-between those two age categories. I decided to also include individuals who live in the UK, as their answers show current trend in politics happening worldwide. Here are the answers translated in English when necessary.

What is your opinion on how politics is covered by television in the country you live in?

• Has improved over the past few years as journalists are less subservient than they used to be and ask pertinent questions. France tends to be obsessed with politics but we tend to only hear about the big parties: PS, LR, FN. I only found out recently that there are about 50 presidential candidates - and that was on the Internet not on television. 
• Biased, focus on one main party, not across the political spectrum.
• Medias are forced by the law during electoral period to give each candidate an equal speaking time. But appart from political elections time, medias are always covering the biggest and not small political parties which is not allowing them to make their ways.
• Not enough debate, too much gossip on important politics, too bias
• Television in the UK is overtly right wing...there is obvious bias in favour of the right on programmes like Question time, C4 News. Laura Kuensberg's constant attack on Jeremy Corbyn is another indicator of where the BBC stands politically. Any reporting on foreign wars/conflict also toes the government and particularly US line. Whatever happened to investigative journalists like John Pilger. We give publicity to the Syrian Obseervatory of Human Rights (one man in Coventry) and the White Helmets...a US funded organisation, for who strong doubts exist regarding the authenticity of its reports from Syria.

How often do you watch politics on television?

What do you use other than television to inform yourself about politics?

What are the main reasons for your answer?

France

• Easy access at all times of the day. You have to know when television programmes are scheduled, at what time in order to watch. Otherwise, you have to remember to catch them on Pluzz before they disappear.
• I don't own a tv (my parents do) and I'm always on my computer and on social media
• On the internet, you can see a lot of different opinions, whereas on TV, I think you can't.

UK

• I have news apps, but I try to keep updated through any means necessary
• More in depth, more time to read.
• I like to get at the truth, which means gathering evidence from various sources and making my own mind up

Factchecking Politics from the Parties.

L'Emission Politique is a political program directed by Didier Froehly, and broadcast on France 2 twice a month since September 2016. The format is as follow: the politician is asked questions by the two presenters, David Pujadas and Léa Salamé. The guest then has to engage in a debate with politicians who don't share the same ideas. Yesterday's guest was Marine Le Pen, head of the Front National (The National Front), the far-right party (leading in the first round according to the polls).

The party decided to use for the first time a concept called factchecking (that originates from the US). They set up a live section on their website (marine2017.fr/verites) called Alerte Fausses Infos (False Information Caution). This is here to point out what the National Front considers a false fact from the people she is interacting with (presenters included). Here are some of the posts published on the website:

translation: L'Emission Politique (10:39pm): David Pujadas on the french debt and the exiting the European Union

David Pujadas doesn't understand anything: the French debt won't be more consequent by exiting the EU. A study from the OFCE of 2016 shows that the debt...

translation: L'Emission Politique (10:42pm): Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (Current Education Minister) doesn't consider the students who want to go in the professional sector.

She considers that starting training at 14 years old was a sorting out process, just like you sort out your garbage!

Ironically, Jean-Luc Melanchon, from the Front de Gauche (far-left party) also invited his followers on Twitter to factcheck the programme. He encouraged poeple to join him for "this big night of detoxification" on observatoire.jlm2017.fr :

/ 

Ce soir, suivez la grande soirée désintox pour l'émission politique de France 2 avec Marine Le Pen sur https://t.co/2SCniCBTBa #ObsInsoumis pic.twitter.com/PuzqqKSuSA

— JLM 2017 (@jlm_2017) 9 February 2017

What does this say about television? Factchecking is an example of the debate moving away from television towards websites and social media.  The concept is attractive for an audience to separate the true from false. I often here this format on the radio, were a presenter comes back on what was said impartially to verify it with statistics. I don't believe parties adopting this is as effective, because they might correct the facts which are beneficial to what they support, and leave out the rest. Moreover, the statistics can be interpreted differently depending on your political opinion.     

Sources: 

http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/2017/02/09/35003-20170209ARTFIG00148-marine-le-pen-sur-france-2-le-fn-fera-du-factchecking-sur-le-web.php

http://www.20minutes.fr/politique/2011863-20170210-marine-pen-emission-politique-match-fact-checking-entre-pro-melenchon-pro-fn 

http://www.liberation.fr/desintox/2017/02/10/quand-le-fn-s-essaie-au-fact-checking-c-est-assez-rate_1547634

Penelope Gate: Entertaining Politics Format.

The Penelope Gate is causing quite a stir in the presidential race. Francois Fillon, the right-wing candidate, built his campaign on the image of a sleaze-free Mr Clean. However, in January, the Canard Enchainé, a satirical newspaper, revealed that Fillion's wife Penelope, was paid 680 000 euros of parliamentary funds for working as an assistant for him over a period of 15 years. But she claimed in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2007 that she had never worked for her husband. Since then, Francois Fillon claims to be the victim of the media. According to him, this affair is a political assassination that paints him as a villain and jeopardises his election chances.

I want to concentrate on how this affair is covered on television, by looking at a particular format. Le Quotidien is an infotainment show, similar to Late Night shows in the UK and US, presented by Yann Barthes and broadcast every Friday evening from 7:20 pm to 9:00 pm on TMC. It uses comedic elements to tackle issues in politics. On 10th February, they broadcast a sensitive report on the attitude of some of Fillon's supporters towards the journalists, a degrading relationship because of how the candidate is portrayed in the media. Unfortunately, the video is protected and can't be subtitled. I invite you to watch it at this address to get a feeling of how the programme is constructed: http://www.lci.fr/medias/video-quotidien-hugo-clement-le-derapage-incontrole-d-un-militant-pro-fillon-qui-compare-les-medias-aux-nazis-a-auschwitz-2025574.html

Le Quotidien aims for transparency and does so mainly through editing. When a supporter says that the Canard Enchaine is left-wing and doesn't publish scandals from left-wing politicians, the show takes archive to demonstrate otherwise. When a man says that bringing this newspaper in a meeting for Fillon is like bringing the Koran in a church and that it's disrespectful, Le Quotidien shows the interview of a priest saying that it's okay to do so.

This key element of this television format is that it's tackled with humour. Jones describes this in his book Entertaining Politics: new political television and civic culture. He argues that these programmes are a response to fakery in television's traditional representation of politics. "The comedians express a desire for honesty in public life [...]resulting most often in a take-it-or-leave-it criticism of the political and social landscape that they encounter and respond to in the course of each day or week" (Jones, 2010, p.53). Moreover, the presence of the audience in the studio enhances the impact of Yann Barthes' arguments. When the public laughs, they acknowledge that the situation is funny and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Sources:

• Jones, J. (2010). Entertaining politics. 1st ed. Lanham: Rowman.
• http://www.lci.fr/medias/video-quotidien-hugo-clement-le-derapage-incontrole-d-un-militant-pro-fillon-qui-compare-les-medias-aux-nazis-a-auschwitz-2025574.html
• http://www.tf1.fr/tmc/quotidien-avec-yann-barthes/videos/quotidien-deuxieme-partie-10-fevrier-2017.html