Angers News (JL)

Vingt Heures logo

Every day at 8pm my host parents turn on the news.  We start eating at 7, so this is about usually around the time we finish with the main course and start eating cheese. The program is called Vingt Heures (20th hour) and it’s the daily news that comes on every day at 20:00 (8:00pm). I don’t understand everything they discuss mainly because I don’t understand French perfectly and also because the newscaster speaks incredibly fast. From what I have seen thus far, the program speaks of every topic available from international politics to a local farmer who produced his record amount of wine for the year. 

Donald Trump himself

I’ve noticed that the most recent covered topic has been the American primary race. It seems bizarre to me that French people are so invested in politics of other nations, because there are so many Americans who don’t even know the politics of their own country, let alone a foreign one! It must be the mindset that the next country is only a couple hours away by car. Vingt Heures spent a lot of time on Donald Trump and my host parents were especially interested in him. Bear in mind that my host parents often spend their free time at the prefecture’s office protesting against the harsh immigration laws, building houses for the homeless, and making me food. I found myself explaining that Donald Trump is, in fact, running for president, that he was a reality TV star, and that he is very popular among many Americans. My host parents were shocked that so many US citizens are willing to vote for someone who’s political platform incudes views that seem to be regressing the social norms of the world. If Vingt Heures didn’t spend so much time on Trump, I would have thought they were relatively unbiased for a news station.  I believe now that my French news source is more left-leaning, and that is a more common view in France seeing as one of their main political parties is the Parti Socialiste.

Here is the tram, arriving on time, I might add

In addition to American politics, the news covers almost everything else, as I mentioned before, although there haven’t been exuberant amounts of cheery news. There is a phrase in French that my host parents said to me that explains this: “On ne parle pas des trains qui arrivent à l’heure” which means “We don’t talk about trains that arrive on time.” Basically when the news only shows the world constantly at war with each other, a train accident last week, natural disasters striking various unprepared developing nations, etc., that is not to say that there are not good things happening too. It is only expected that the train will arrive on time, and if it doesn’t then people have something to talk about. It is slightly saddening to realize this isn’t unique to France, but to the United States too; that the breaking news and prime time spots are covered by stories that would have been boring if nothing had gone wrong.

In general, the news in France is more concerned with others rather than just itself. I think that’s great because it’s always important to know what the happenings of the world are. The French portray themselves relatively honestly, meaning from what I’ve seen they neither over praise nor undermine themselves. They could focus more on out-of-the-ordinary cheery stories, in my opinion, but we need to work on that too. Most of their coverage focuses on concrete subjects, especially people and events going on around the world, but they include ideological issues such as the recent reform to work and education, which I will talk about in my next blog on education.  All in all, French news assesses global topics with more in depth knowledge than US newscasters do.

Until next time, bloggers!