October 8, 2024

Press Adds ‘What if?’ to Five W’s in France

With many French journalists (and their sources) away from late July to late August and many vacationing readers less inclined than ever to read daily reports about Europe’s dreary economy or global turmoil, newspapers and magazines here leave some of the news behind in favor of far more creative writing.

Articles on offer this summer starred the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire and that most golden of monarchs, Louis XIV, as well as a series of “interviews” with long-dead composers, and ventures into somewhat esoteric historical fiction like “what if the oil embargo of 1973 had gone on longer?”

Rather than turning to shark attacks or celebrity scandals while the country burns through what is typically five weeks of vacation time, the French press uses the seasonal torpor to run pieces that entertain with a literary flair, if also a sometimes tenuous link to reality.

“We have very long holidays here, and you cannot really work, you can’t find your usual sources, but you have to fill the newspaper,” said Alexandra Schwartzbrod, the deputy managing editor of Libération, a leftist daily newspaper.

And, she added, “readers are looking for something different, something lighter.”

Rather than being seen as obscure, newspapers that offer flights of fancy, or a quirky turn on history (there was a series on great autopsies and another on famous impostors) do well. Read closely, some of these pieces are highly political but less dogmatic than editorials. They draw on the fondness in France for discussing books and all things intellectual; while the fiction best-seller lists include the latest Dan Brown novel, “Inferno,” the top nonfiction book at the moment is “A Summer With Montaigne” by Antoine Compagnon.

This summer, Libération ran a series of 40 essays of historical fiction (it is the paper’s 40th anniversary) on what the world — or at least France — would have been like if real events had turned out differently. For instance, what if the far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen had become prime minister? (Answer: abortion becomes a crime; the death penalty is reinstated; the remains of Philippe Pétain, who was a World War I hero but then led France’s Vichy government, are disinterred from the cemetery near his last prison and reburied with other World War I veterans.)

Another essay considered a Y2K bug that lived up to popular fears. Clocks were reset to 1900, and Marcel Proust communicated with French sailors on a nuclear submarine — the piece had both a zaniness and a creativity that is unheard-of in American newspaper writing. However improbable the conjectures, the conceit was provocative, inviting the reader into an imaginary salon where people have the time and frame of reference to use their imaginations for pure pleasure.

“People look to Libération for irony, for satire, the summer notebooks are a way to criticize things in a playful way,” said Éric Loret, an editor at the paper, who worked on the historical fiction essays.

Le Figaro, a paper seen as a bastion of the political right, has been running a 17-part series of political fiction. It imagines that the current Socialist president, François Hollande, visits the tomb of the former Socialist president, François Mitterrand, in the middle of the night accompanied by the former conservative president, Jacques Chirac.

Mr. Hollande, in this telling, explains to Mr. Chirac that he has been encouraged by the spirit of Mr. Mitterrand to dissolve the National Assembly, which would provoke new legislative elections. Political mayhem ensues. At the end of the series, it turns out that it is all a grand joke by Mr. Hollande, but when asked how he actually plans to address France’s problems, his answer is, “I do not know.” It is a way for Le Figaro to write about what it sees as Mr. Hollande’s weak leadership.

Meanwhile Le Figaro’s weekly magazine has been running “interviews” by a music writer with dead composers: Frédéric Chopin, Gioachino Rossini, Richard Wagner and Jacques Offenbach, among others.

In the piece on Offenbach, the writer tries to depict Offenbach’s character by describing the composer as constantly interrupting the interview to talk to and about singers he is auditioning for his next operetta.

The articles even carry a date that corresponds to each composer’s lifetime: Sept. 12, 1873, for Offenbach, who died in 1880.

Behind the talkiness and the whimsy lies a deep difference between the role of the French press and that of its American counterpart.

“We don’t have a popular press in France at all,” said Erwann Gaucher, a media critic who directs the regional Web sites for France Télévision and teaches at the journalism school at Sciences Po in Paris, referring to a press for a broad public like those that exist in Britain and the United States. “These papers are aimed at people who are clearly part of a higher class and socio-professional category.”

“There is an aspect of being in a club of peers during the summer, so let’s talk about beautiful things, like a club of people who like the Enlightenment,” he said.

Mr. Loret of Libération added that it is something of an expectation, particularly of the well educated in France, to know some Victor Hugo poetry, some Voltaire and a smattering of the work of many other literary and philosophical figures.

Since writers have backgrounds similar to their readers’, these topics seem like natural fodder.

Le Monde, which is left-leaning but viewed as the country’s newspaper of record, took a somewhat more down-to-earth approach to the summer-series tradition this year, with its look at “great autopsies,” including those of Ludwig van Beethoven, Michael Jackson and Ötzi, the 5,000-year-old mummy found in 1991 in the Alps.

Mr. Gaucher sees all these efforts as an example of French journalists’ predilection for being clever and writerly, but not necessarily for producing what might elsewhere be considered good journalism.

“There are a lot of journalists in France who are more or less consciously writers who don’t write and here suddenly in the summer they have a bit of space, they have a bit of time to address topics that aren’t journalism anymore,” he said.

“But it creates something rather strange: right now there is as much news as there is at any other time of year, most notably in Egypt, but it’s the time when they are going to write about ‘the most beautiful places in France’ or ‘great philosophers,’ or ‘our ancestors, the Gauls.’ It’s completely crazy.”

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/world/europe/press-adds-what-if-to-five-ws-in-france.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Swiss Central Bank Chief Resigns After Uproar

FRANKFURT  — The head of the Swiss central bank unexpectedly resigned Monday, saying that doubts about currency trades he and his wife made last year threatened to undermine his ability to focus solely on steering the bank through a global financial crisis.

The resignation of Philipp M. Hildebrand, who had an international reputation as an advocate for tougher bank regulation, came as a surprise. Just last week, he offered a detailed defense of his conduct and appeared to have the support of the council that oversees the Swiss National Bank.

Speaking at a news conference in Bern, Mr. Hildebrand said he still does not believe he did anything wrong. “I stand by my word that I never lied,” he said.

But, he said, he came to the conclusion that he could not prove to doubters that he had not known about a $500,000 currency transaction his wife made days before the S.N.B. stepped up its intervention in currency markets. “I can’t once and for all prove that it was the way I said it was,” he said.

“Credibility is a central banker’s most valuable asset,” Mr. Hildebrand said. The accusations might have been a burden “during a time when total focus is needed on the duties” of the office, he said.

Mr. Hildebrand wil be replaced at least temporarily by Thomas Jordan, vice president of the S.N.B. He could face market challenges to the bank’s attempt to enforce a limit on the value of the franc against the euro.

“We do not expect any change in the conduct of the Swiss monetary policy,” Julien Manceaux, an analyst at ING Bank, said in a note to clients. The exchange rate floor “is here to stay, with or without Philipp Hildebrand.”

For much of the last three years, the S.N.B. has been engaged in a battle to keep investors from bidding up the value of the Swiss franc, which is seen as a haven from global turmoil. The rise of the franc against the euro and other currencies threatened to make Swiss exports too costly on world markets.

Mr. Hildebrand said he would also step down from several other posts that have made him an influential voice in the debate about how to limit risk-taking by banks and avert future financial crises.

He is vice president of the Financial Stability Board, a group of central bankers and regulators who advise the Group of 20 nations on measures to make the global banking system safer.

Mr. Hildebrand said he would also step down as a member of the board of the Bank for International Settlements, an institution based in Basel, Switzerland, that acts as a clearinghouse for national central banks.

He said he would also resign as one of two Swiss representatives on the board of governors of the International Monetary Fund.

“This is a step which saddens me greatly,” Mr. Hildebrand said. “I depart on good terms and I would like to think I have been a damn good central banker.”

Mr. Hildebrand faced accusations that he or his wife bought and sold large amounts of dollars last year at the same time that the S.N.B. was intervening in currency markets.

The accusations came to light in late December after a former information technology worker at Bank Sarasin, a Swiss private bank, gave information from Mr. Hildebrand’s personal account to the right-wing Swiss People’s Party.

The party, which has substantial popular support, has been sharply critical of the monetary policy pursued by Mr. Hildebrand, as well as his efforts to constrain risk-taking by Swiss banks.

Mr. Hildebrand’s stands on banking regulation have made him some enemies in the industry, something he alluded to Monday. He said he received an e-mail from a friend quoting Woodrow Wilson: “If you want to make enemies, change some things.”

The Bank Sarasin employee who passed on the information about Mr. Hildebrand’s accounts faces criminal charges for violating bank secrecy laws. The 39-year-old man, who has not been identified, is in a psychiatric clinic after attempting suicide, the newspaper Sonntagszeitung and other Swiss media reported.

 

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a647f1d01f9626b667f306803d0c7992

Bucks: Friday Reading: When the Elderly Can Afford to Pay, but Won’t

August 05

Friday Reading: When the Elderly Can Afford to Pay, but Won’t

Stocks plunge on fears of global turmoil, Medicare drug costs are unlikely to rise, when elderly people can afford to pay for what they need but won’t, and other consumer news from Friday’s Times.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5860cd497c621d91a36d3757ec57b968