THE snub was too great for Gallic pride. France had suffered an indignity when, in February 2003, CNN failed to broadcast applause at the United Nations for a speech by Dominique de Villepin, then the Foreign Minister, opposing the war in Iraq.
For President Chirac it was time for action. If CNN would not show the world’s diplomats clapping his ministers, then he would have to do it himself.
He is determined to drive through his pet project – La Chaine Française d’Information Internationale, a French-based global, rolling news channel – before he leaves office next spring.
And he will probably succeed. The station has a budget – 70 million (£48 million) a year – a director, Alain de Pouzilhac, the former head of Havas, the advertising agency, plus the basis of an editorial team, which eventually will have 170 journalists.
If all goes to plan, it will be beamed to 40 million households in Europe, Africa and the Middle East by November, when it will begin, in M Chirac’s words, to "carry the values of France and its vision of the world around the globe".
But will it fulfil M Chirac’s ambition of matching CNN, or even meet the more modest demands of his Government, which is to challenge BBC World and Deutsche Welle? The signs are not promising. It is a clear example of the muddle produced by politicians dabbling in areas they do not understand.
Take, for example, the name. La Chaine Française d’Information Internationale sounded fine to the President. However, it will be unpronounceable and incomprehensible to a global audience. So, M de Pouzilhac scrapped it and has told consultants to find another.
M de Pouzilhac also realised that because 80 per cent of the target audience speaks English, that should be the station’s main language.
But M Chirac blew his top. From the President’s point of view, the object of the project is to counter Anglo-Saxon dominance and promote cultural diversity. He demanded the pre-eminence of French.
In the end, a compromise was found. The station will have two channels, which will broadcast the same programmes.
One will be exclusively French, while 75 per cent of the other will be in English, with the rest in French.
The most complex issue of all, however, will not be technical, logistical or even commercial. It will be smoothing relations between the two partners browbeaten into forming the channel: the state-owned France Télévisions, and the private TF1.
The two have a long history of competition – like the BBC and ITV – and neither desired the partnership. France Télévisions, which is financed by a licence fee, wanted to run the international channel on its own.
And the highly profitable TF1 saw the project as a black hole. It came on board only to avoid irking M Chirac. It may also hope to recycle images from its own home-based rolling news channel, LCI.
Monique Cerisier-ben Guiga, a French senator, said: "This association could spark conflicts of interest, rivalry and waste."
A trade union at France Télévisions said that it would provoke an "identity crisis".
The plan has already provoked a clash of egos. Ulysse Gosset, a journalist, moved from France Télévisions to become joint editorial director on a salary of 130,000 a year.
But he was furious when he discovered that the other joint editorial director, Jean-Pierre Paoli, who came from TF1, had conserved his former pay – 320,000 a year.
M Gosset’s pay was promptly increased to 220,000 and TF1 was asked to chip in 100,000 to the cost of M Paoli’s salary. It refused and M Paoli quit.
With M de Pouzilhac earning 300,000 a year, executive pay will account for almost 3 per cent of the budget – about a seventh of CNN’s.
Yet M de Pouzilhac remains optimistic. He hopes to overcome difficulties by concluding a deal to use journalists employed by the Agence France Presse, the French news agency, and by Radio France Internationale, the international French radio.
"The new channel will develop the point of view of France and treat international news objectively and independently," he said. "It will not see things the same way as CNN, BBC World or al-Jazeera."
So the next time M de Villepin – now Prime Minister – is applauded at the UN, the world will know it.
