“As a correspondent in Washington, what are the specificities of covering an American presidential campaign, compared to the one we know in France or in Europe?”asks a listener. Sébastien Paour, Radio France/Franceinfo correspondent in Washington, and Emmanuelle Daviet, Radio France antenna mediator.
Emmanuelle Daviet: What can we answer to this listener, precisely?
Sébastien Paour: There aren’t many differences in the end, we follow candidates, we find out about their program, which we try to detail, we also follow their support, and we keep up to date with each of their movements. The major difference for a foreign media in a country like the United States is that we do not weigh heavily for these candidates, so getting an interview, for example, with Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is impossible, let’s put it clearly.
So it is from this point of view that it makes things a little more complicated, including for meetings, because since the mid-term elections in 2022, for example with Trump, he has not is no longer possible to be accredited as a foreign journalist, to enter and follow a meeting of the Republican candidate, as a foreign journalist. We are obliged to register as public participants, and to question Donald Trump supporters, discreetly, with a small recorder, hidden, in the crowd of activists. No longer possible to be with the press as we did until now, and again for the 2020 election.
With Kamala Harris it’s a little simpler, we manage to enter the meetings as a journalist, but the same thing, we are not always made aware as a foreign journalist, of the times and places where she is moves, which makes it quite difficult for us to anticipate and plan our movements. So it’s a little complicated when we’re a foreign media here, a radio compared to the power of the American media. Obviously, these two candidates have no interest in speaking to Radio France.
Sébastien Paour, the place of the media, and in particular social networks, is crucial in this campaign, how does this influence your way of working as a journalist in the field, listeners ask…
It is a permanent source of information, the American media, the social networks, but even the main American media, the “mainstream media”, as Donald Trump calls them, those that they criticize as being “fake news” media. : major newspapers, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journalall these are media that are very powerful, which have a huge number of reporters on the ground, a huge number of people who cover the White House, who follow each of the candidates.
And so this daily reading of social networks and these newspapers allows us to find sources of information, sources of inspiration, ideas, angles for subjects, places where, obviously, me, being alone here in the United States, I struggle with being able to see everything and be everywhere.
So, when I read in a newspaper or on a site, or on someone’s post, on social networks that he or she went to such and such a place to do a report which seems interesting to me, which seems to me to illustrate a problem in a place and at a given time, sometimes I say to myself: hey, why not go and do the same report or at least go to the same place?
Other public French-speaking radio stations are located in Washington, and you all tell the story together, with your sisters and brothers, of the campaign for the American presidential election through the podcast Washington from here. What editorial or narrative freedom does this podcast give you compared to radio reports?
Sébastien Paour: We’re trying to make it something that’s in the spirit of a “band”, a little bit. The five of us know each other well. We often see each other either in reporting or outside, when we are in the field, or when we are here in Washington, and we share in a more conversational mode; we speak to each other informally, we share all our experiences.
When one went to a Kamala Harris meeting, and another went to a Trump meeting, and a third went to another meeting, a meeting of a support association, or participated going door to door, in a key state which will or will not change the election next month, well, we put all that together, and we try to enrich what we do on our respective antennas in reporting , through this podcast, which is a meeting around the table.
Moreover, we have already done it around a table, at Frédéric Arnould’s (from Radio Canada). He had made a paella, and we recorded an episode of the podcast at his home, in a conversational mode once again, with familiarity, where we learned, I hope even more things, behind the scenes of our respective reports.