SacredFacts

Biting the hand that's stopped feeding you...

Leading a public broadcaster can be a perilous occupation, as we know. Take France for example. At the start of 2008 President Sarkozy decided there should be no advertising on French public television. (For British readers, it's common for public broadcasters to take advertising as well as public funds in other parts of the world). This would obviously leave a big funding gap for France Television to fill. There have been promises of staged funding and special grants to help bridge the problem - but no agreement.

Then on Monday Sarkozy criticised the broadcaster saying he could see no difference between what they did and what the commercial channels did (by implication - questioning the value of the public funding). This follows increasingly tense relations between France Television and the government. Sarkozy recently said in future he would personally appoint the President of the Public Broadcaster - in the past it was left to the independent regulator.

So today the Director General Patrick de Carolis hit back. In an article in Le Figaro he said: "When someone says that there are no differences between public and private programming, I find that false, stupid and ... profoundly unjust. In the last three years we have tried hard to make respectable television and I know that we are respected.'' And he suggested if the funding needed wasn't agreed by September he would resign.

He may not be given the choice. Calling the President "stupid" is not usually career enhancing.

Two themes here: the independence of public broadcasting under attack by politicians who do not respect it (acknowledging of course that all PSB's need to reform and need to be accountable).

And a wider battle about the right balance in the future of the media between the market and public intervention. In the UK, it's played out through OfCom reviews which are gentlemanly in comparison with other countries. Just across the channel, it's an altogether tougher game.

(Disclosure: I sit on the Executive Board of the EBU with Patrick de Carolis)

Speak Freely

I went to the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression awards earlier this week. Keynote speech from Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans and Mao: the untold story. I presented the journalism award which went to jailed Egyptian blogger, Abdul Kareen Suleiman. Other winners included Samir Kassir for his book, Being Arab, (Samir was a Lebanese journalist, killed by a bomb planted under his car in 2005) Yoav Shamir for his film Five Days about Israeli settlers being evicted from Gaza, and Siphiwe Hlophe, an HIV positive woman from Swaziland who works with other HIV postive women. Also, Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer in the Shandong province of China, who has worked on human rights for women forced to have late abortions or sterilisation.

The mood was lifted at the end by a charity auction. I had donated a World Service SW radio - for which, in a rash moment swept away by the atmosphere no doubt, Anna Ford bid £360. She looked slightly rueful afterwards so I offered to throw in the batteries as well.