12/06/2004|||110233013228405722||||||

DOOM & GLOOM AT LE MONDE

Frank Johnson (reg required) wonders if France's newspaper of record has always been a little over-rated:

"When I lived in Paris for six months in the 1980s, I sought out the kiosk at which it would appear earliest. That was then about 2pm.

"I would grab the paper and hurry to a nearby brasserie. There I would simultaneously wolf down my cassoulet and Le Monde's vast dispatches. No attempt was made to excite readers, just to inform them. I felt like the foreign minister surveying the day's ambassadorial telegrams, or even Talleyrand with his many private sources of important information. A typical headline across a whole page would read: 'Changes at the heart of the Cambodian Communist Party.'

"But after a while, I began reading the reports from my own country. There, it seemed, all was chaos and conflict as compared with, say, Cambodia. Le Monde reported, for instance that Mme Thatcher at last faced a formidable new Labour leader, M Foot. So the thought occurred: if Le Monde thinks old Footie a threat to Thatcher, why should I believe what it says about Cambodia?

"But the long dispatches from exotic places, other than Britain, still entranced. I think they entranced the French educated class, too. Le Monde was a blessed escape from the clamorous media, not part of it."

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/12/doom-gloom-at-le-monde-frank-johnson.html|||12/06/2004 10:30:00 am|||||||||

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