The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves

Bingo. In the US, we're used to interweaving corporate brands into our collective psyche, and it's ok with us (well, most of us).

In France, it's disallowed on fairly understandable ideals.

Which brings up the counter-question (left as exercise for reader):

Is the US too corporatized?

> Though the story is interesting, I'm flagging this article for extreme bias while trying to sound like a news outlet

What are you talking about? What about it is trying to "sound like a news outlet?" It says right in the side of the page, "Matthew Fraser - Reflections on life and literature in Paris." It's clearly a blog.

> The author took a law that makes a little sense and tries to find hidden agendas, self interests and contradictions in official reports with little or no evidence.

What could possibly make sense about prohibiting people from mentioning Facebook and Twitter on television? The CSA spokesperson actually asked, "Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?" Because Facebook beat out those networks struggling for recognition, that's why. It's not anyone else's problem that Facebook beat them.

I find the author's nationalist explanation to be plausible. This is the same government that insisting on inventing its own term for email that was more "distinctly French."

But the FCC never banned the phrase French Fries.

But it really is a silly childish thing. They made up "courriel" just so they didn't have to use "email". But electronic is électroniques in French (and both ultimately come from the Greek) and the English word "mail" is derived from Old French. It's an opportunity to underline the French in English and shared heritage I would have thought.

As the other comment points out, the things you point to weren't mandated by the State; I think the whole idea of the State controlling the language in such a way is insane.

The French traditionally are very proud of French culture and (in the USA) have a stereotype of being very snobby about it.

Keep in mind that France actually invented its own term for email simply to have a term that it considered to be more French.

This ban has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of resentment of Anglo-Saxon culture (though such a resentment does definitely exist).

In France citing the name of a commercial entity when it's not relevant to the news/show is considered unfair advertisement. So it's banned, unless you name all competitors of the field. It's very common when watching a live TV show to have the interviewer remind the interviewee that they cannot name a brand.

France have many such "fairness" rules. Another example is during presidential elections: all TV/radio channels must allot the exact same air time to all candidates.

I doubt this is true: I believe it is illegal to have a job written only in English, which is a bit different.

While I agree that it is annoying, a law is not the way to fix that. It's also very useful, as it connects the viewers with more information. I don't think anything would convince news outlets to stop since it drives up their website traffic, etc.

That’s entirely different. France, the U.S. and large parts of Europe all use the latin alphabet. We only have that one writing system (as opposed to the Japanese who have several). Katakana, hiragana and kanji (also the latin alphabet) are different ways of writing with different symbols and different ways of using those symbols. An “A”, however, is still an “A”, whether it’s typeset with Arial, Papyrus or Comic Sans.

Also, this regulation is not really about protection the language from loan words. It’s about advertising.

Funny idea. In fact, you're joking but it is already the case. In French, loan words must be italicized, and if not italics available, isolated in French quotes, « comme ceci ».

I'm french, and I grew up with this law. So it doesn't sound absurd to me, but my opinion is biased. This has always existed (well apparently since 1992), and for every brand. But you are making a point that we cannot cite other brand, in fact, the law state that, if you cite one brand of the domain (here social network), you should also cite the others. And finally, I was watching french shows this week, and they frequently bypass the law by citing facebook and twitter.

You're taking the problem from the wrong side.

It had always been forbidden to advertise anything owned by a private company except in some news directly related to it.

"Iran is revolting on Twitter" is relevant. "DSK did epic shit in a hotel, follow the news on twitter" is irrelevant. It sounds like a national channel advising to buy newspaper X every time to get more informations about the story.

While I personally understand both case, Twitter is a great communication channel, it's still owned by a private company, being quoted by a public channel.

The CSA is fighting against my second example, which would consider Facebook and Twitter no more as companies but as public tools, creating a bloody mess : when should we consider a private tool as a public one ? That's what they meant by opening the pandora box.

But of course, I strongly agree, crafting some absurd law is clearly a wrong measure but it's not absurd given the strict context we have here in France about national medias.

That was exactly what I came here to write. I understand the spirit of this law, that using facebook and twitter is using a public good for advertising outside of the context of an ad. But some of these brands have a tendency to become words in there own right, and like kleenex or google, the word becomes synonymous with the brands' function. I believe Webster has included "Google" as a verb now. It'd be interesting to know how french people say "to google", and if this legislation addresses such uses of the term on public broadcasts.

Get the fuck...?