My 3 minutes 24 seconds of fame...

I am certainly not known for making long stories short and am infamous for quite the opposite. However I really do not have a lot of time recently for anything...

I was at a client's yesterday when I received a phone call from a friend who I've known for years. She had been recently interviewed by BBC World Service for some lexicographical information. Apparently the producer of the BBC World Service Europe Today program had called her looking to speak to Americans as regards September 11th and the evolution of how Americans have been treated in France. She gave him my contact information and he called me. When I was done with my client I had a long talk with him outside and basicaly did a phone pre-interview.

I found the subject quite interesting and was able to throw in quite a few mentions of our school and even our parents' association. I got the feeling during the interview however that I was not necessarily the ideal candidate he was looking for and I also felt that the direction I was going in as regards the treatment of Americans in France was not necessarily what he was looking to portray. I naively thought that this is the news and therefore it didn't matter. After our discussion he asked me to go to the BBC World Service Paris studios to record an interview. It was very close to where I was, it would take 15 minutes and I was just heading home anyway. Hell I get stuck in traffic for longer than that.

I walked to the BBC World Service Paris office which was a tiny little thing with 3 "journalists" working at computers and a small, but impressive, recording studio. I was sat down with an 8-track sound board in front of me. My eyes lit up and I was immediately reminded not to touch anything. That was a good thing as my first reflex was to play...

The producer came over the headphones, from London, and briefly went over our original discussion and then finally the interviewer. He asked me the questions for the "real interview" and it was very obvious we were going in two different directions. It was obvious that everything I had said about the school was no longer of interest. It was also obvious that I was not the proud American citizen in France they were looking for. They were not that interested in my positive comments as regards the general treatment of Americans in France and they took some of my comments as regards treatment of foreigners in general and applied them to the Americans. And this was just within the interview itself! The interview ended on a sour note as I was not able to give them the sound bite they were looking for. He wanted to end the interview with the question "So Derek are you proud to be an American and in France?" I replied "I'm afraid I can't say that I am." He then came back with "Can you say you are proud to be an American?" and I replied "I certainly could not go on the record with that remark... all I can say is I am pleased and proud to be in France." After the mike was supposedly shut down he thanked me for the interview and I apologised for not being the ideal American interviewee.

In the evening I listened to the end result on the Europe Today web page. If you hurry to that page you can hear the entire show online... until they upload the next show to replace it. I realised just how naive I was. Through some rather brilliant editing they had actually made it sound like I felt that Americans were treated poorly in France for a time. They even took one of the things I just generally mentioned and threw in a question before it, which they had never actually asked me during the interviews, so it sounds like my remark was in reply to the question. My remark as to speaking French so as not to be recognised as an American was not in relation to anything as regards snide remarks. It was in relation to a separet discussion about the fact that I am not proud to be an American and am pleased to be an expatriot.

The entire experience just goes to enforce my skeptical and cynical beliefs as regards the bias of the news media around the world. The more I am personally involved with events which are newsworthy and then see how they are portrayed in the news the more I realise just how far reality is from the news.

I obviously recorded my part of the interview for prosperity. I have stored it all in one MP3 File which is 1.6 Megabytes in size. I stand behind very little of what it appears as though I actually said.