Oft elitist French elections try a town-hall style
A spate of new television programs feature 'real people,' rather than journalists or experts, interrogating presidential candidates.
from the March 19, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
Past presidential campaigns in France have featured more conventional television appearances by candidates who were questioned by journalists and editorial writers. The big event has always been the traditional live debate between the two candidates who won the most votes in the first round and faced each other in the runoff election.
Those events were considered models of gravity and eloquent language, so much so that a popular new theater production in Paris features two actors reenacting the 1974 and 1981 debates of two former French presidents, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand.
The trend this time around is a preference for virtual campaigns that cut out the journalists or experts. The candidates all have websites featuring edited videos of their campaign appearances. Nearly all of them have blogs, and they purport to personally answer the questions posed online.
It's a short jump from interactive blogging to televised question-and-answer sessions with panels of real-life citizens, according to critics.
"As applied to the media, 'participatory democracy' is nothing but an efficient way [for politicians] to escape confrontation," said Christophe Barbier, editor of the newsmagazine L'Express, in a recent interview.
Reporters from France's public television stations have also been grumbling. Last month, a group of them started a national petition drive to demand standard face-to-face debates that are moderated by journalists.
By leaving the questioning to the public, they said, broadcasters were simply giving candidates a soapbox for two hours of canned speeches and uninterrupted monologues.
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