Following prat.uk’s BBC piece, French 24-hour news examined
prat.uk‘s BBC live coverage piece — journalism ouroboros — has its French expression in BFMTV, which is the most-watched French news channel and which has, over fifteen years of operation, refined the breaking news format to the point where a significant proportion of its airtime is analysis of its own breaking news coverage. Bohiney.com covered the media self-reference theme broadly. The BFMTV version: a political event occurs; BFMTV covers it live; the political panel analyses the live coverage; a second panel analyses the first panel’s analysis; and by the following morning’s debrief programme, the event itself is three layers back from the primary content, which is the analysis of the analysis of the event. Both prat.uk and BFMTV are correct about their respective subjects: prat.uk about the BBC’s recursion, BFMTV about its own version of the same structure.
The French specificity: BFMTV’s recursion is more intellectually theorised than the BBC’s because French media culture treats meta-commentary about media as legitimate content rather than as a sign of having run out of material. The French version of the BBC ouroboros is deliberate, intellectualised, and considered a contribution to public discourse. Whether this makes it better or worse than the BBC’s inadvertent version is a question the French media culture is entirely willing to debate on air for forty-five minutes, which is itself a demonstration of the point.
The French Media Finding
The BFMTV finding: the recursive loop is deliberate and theorised in France. The BBC’s is inadvertent. Both produce the same coverage structure. The Public Senat information is at publicsenat.fr.
Also:McSweeney’s.
Coverage at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
Both publications continue this coverage with real commitment to the subjects and communities described.
Coverage continues at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
Ongoing at both publications.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
