|
|
|
 Travel Writers' Resources | May 2008 
The AFP Is Not a Blog
 Christophe Beaudufe - Le Monde
go to original
Information supplier to over 10,000 media outlets in the world Agence France-Presse has just been the object of a virulent attack by [France's ruling party] the UMP, which reproaches the agency for "censoring" some of its communiqués.
The affair could simply reflect the "normal" influence game between the press and the government, did it not intervene precisely at a critical moment in the negotiations between AFP and the State for renewal of a goals and means contract vital to the Agency's survival.
What is the issue? UMP spokesman Mr. Frédéric Lefebvre sent a letter to AFP's chairman the evening of May 1 - with copies to several Parisian media outlets - "denouncing" the editorial choice of the political department not to cover one of the party's communiqués. The UMP communiqué in this instance was about the affair opposing Mme. Royal and two former associates who won a suit on appeal to obtain their unpaid salaries from the former presidential candidate.
This issue, widely covered by the AFP as it happened, occasioned several new dispatches in April. Notably on April 11, a dispatch quoted Mr. Lefebvre, and already detailed the UMP's grievances against the former Socialist presidential candidate. So the agency's political department - as it does daily with many communiqués - made an editorial choice not to cover this particular text which did not add any new information.
Seeing this as a deliberate AFP choice to take one party's side against the other demonstrates a profound ignorance of our operation. Since May 1, Mr. Lefebvre has reiterated his accusations, going so far as to speak of AFP "censorship." According to UMP deputies, President Sarkozy himself criticized AFP's attitude during his meeting with his party's MPs on May 7.
This argument calls for several clarifications.
AFP, with its status determined by an act of Parliament in 1957, is a press agency independent of all economic and political power. It has no shareholders and lives solely from the sale of its services to media outlets and institutions. Full disclosure requires me to say that the government is its biggest client and that the Agency could not survive in its present form without government support. Hence, the critical character of the negotiations underway which should allow the financing of AFP's development for years to come, notably by helping it to renew its computer systems to adapt them to multimedia requirements.
Nonetheless, since 1957, AFP's legal status and daily courageous practice have allowed the Agency's journalists to exercise their profession in complete independence. Political pressures have never been absent. And the Agency's journalists have always made it a point of honor to resist them all. The Agency is a news wholesaler: our editorial choices, our analyses, our syntheses of the news must - by rule - be usable as they are issued to left-leaning newspapers and to right-leaning newspapers, by the provincial press, by the national media and by on-line news sites. A precise and detailed editorial charter of several dozen pages provides the framework for our daily work. And whoever could make out an AFP "political line" after a half-century would be a real genius. Impartiality is our profession, our mission and our pride.
Impartiality. Not unlimited communication in all directions. The Agency's journalists sort, evaluate and use information exactly the way journalists of all other media do. A press agency is not a blog on which political and economic actors come post whatever they please. It's an editorial service that owes its readers credible and verified information placed in proper context.
Moreover, the AFP never "publishes" any communiqué, whatever its source. Communiqués are simply "covered" by journalists who use the raw material they provide for brief or elaborated dispatches. A communiqué is covered whenever it provides "new and interesting" news. The UMP's May 1 communiqué was nothing but a repeat of previous commentaries and contained no new information.
Yet a word. While the Paris editorial board confronts these political pressures, the Agency's life continues. In this beginning of the month of May, colleagues risk their lives in Burma, Lebanon, Iraq and other countries in order to continue to deliver to the whole world texts, photos, infographics and videos that testify to the march of the century. On five continents, in the five languages AFP uses for distribution, thousands of newspapers, radio stations, television stations and Internet sites trust us to supply them with news. Their trust is based on a long-term assessment of our work. It is also based on the conviction that the AFP is a free actor in the news world.
By bestowing a specific status on the AFP in 1957 that assures its independence vis-à-vis the State, our lawmakers displayed a political resolve: to give France an international press agency such as only the United States, Great Britain and the USSR had at that time. Five decades later, the AFP is one of the three premier global press agencies and the sole francophone one.
The AFP is not France's "official voice." And it would lose a great deal were it to become so. But it is one of the voices by which France may still make its values - including defense of a free press - heard beyond its borders.
No one would profit from silencing this free and independent voice, either by depriving the agency of the means necessary to its development or by transforming it into a lair for "communiqués."
Christophe Beaudufe is president of the Society of AFP journalists.
Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us