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RFI operates under the auspices and primary budget of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. It broadcasts in various languages, including English, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Chinese and Spanish. It also owns Radio Monte Carlo-Middle East, which produces Arabic programmes in Paris, and airs them from a transmitter in Cyprus to audiences across the Middle East and North Africa. RFI's English service broadcasts for five and a half hours a day. Its website's music section has a collection of biographies in both the French and English languages. On September 17, 2002, Togolese President Gnassingbé Eyadéma tried to stop the broadcasting of an interview with one of his opponents, Agbéyomé Kodjo, by phoning directly to the Elysée Palace. The interview was not censored by Jean-Paul Cluzel, RFI's CEO at the time, due to the coordinated intervention of the journalists' trade-unions. However, a report raising questions regarding the French secret services responsibilities in the 1995 death of judge Bernard Borrel in Djibouti, which was broadcast on May 17, 2005, was later removed from RFI's website for undisclosed reasons, possibly due to the intervention of Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh. On 21 October 2003, Jean Hélène was reporting for RFI during the civil war in Ivory Coast when he was killed in Abidjan by police Sergeant Théodore Séry Dago. A previous RFI English service presenter is BBC World Service's Owen Thomas. The RFI website is currently banned in the People's Republic of China. |
