Francis Plourde

“You have two stories, one about a group of Chinese protesters for the independence of Tibet in front of the Vancouver Public Library, the other one about a stolen trash basket in front of the French Cultural Centre. Which one do you pick?” a senior reporter at Radio-Canada once asked me. His answer: “Don’t hesitate, take the story about the trash basket.”

He was kidding, of course, but his little joke summarized what a reporter faces when working in a French environment in Vancouver. I quickly faced issues that I never expected when I started working for Radio-Canada, my previous experience being in print reporting.

At Radio-Canada, the French arm of the national public broadcaster, I’ve found that newsworthiness is often tied to French language proficiency – something which may seem superficial to the majority of the population of Vancouver, but which is crucial to our audience, a small enclave of francophones in an anglophone world. As I’d soon realize, these challenges are compounded when the medium is radio or television.

Being a French reporter in Vancouver is a little bit like being a foreign correspondent. But unlike foreign correspondents, who have a mandate to tell what is going on in a certain country, and to talk to local people for a far-away audience, we have to interview people from the community for the same community. Which often makes things complicated.

The article is available here.