The night-walkers of Uganda

partners such as the main French news agency 
and Radio France International. Some people 
say France 24 will simply be a summary of 
what other TV channels are broadcasting. 170 
journalists will work for France 24 and the station 
will receive €86m (£58m) of public money for 
the first year, France 24 is much smaller than its 
competitors. CNN has a budget of €1.2bn and 
4,000 employees. 
But France 24’s journalists say it will influence 
world politics. Mark Owen, who will present the 
English morning news, said: “The BBC and CNN 
The news through French eyes
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didn’t report Jacques Chirac’s call for a ceasefire 
in Lebanon this summer. If more TV stations 
had reported his call, maybe it could have saved 
hundreds of lives. That story needed a French 
angle, with France’s historic links to Lebanon.” 
The France 24 website will open tonight and the 
station goes live tomorrow. There will be a 10-
minute news bulletin each half hour and between 
the news bulletins, magazine programmes with 
topics including lifestyle, culture, economics 
and business. The Week in France will discuss 
politics and society, and other weekly specials 
will come from Asia, the Americas, Africa and the 
Middle East. 
Critical reaction to the new station has been 
positive. Guillaume Parmentier, director of the 
French Centre on the United States, said: “It’s 
not an anti-American operation. It’s more than 
that. France didn’t have an international news 
channel while many other countries have them. 
It is really surprising that it has taken such a long 
time for France to have an international news 
channel.” 
The news through French eyes