François Picard (journalist)

Picard started his career in Hudson Valley local radio, working at WKIP in Poughkeepsie, WRWD and WAMC. He has won multiple awards for local news coverage (including from New York State National Association of Broadcasters, Associated Press and National Association of Broadcasters).

In 1990, he moved back to France where he reported for Radio France International, Marketplace radio, UPI and Eurosport. Assignments included the 1994 D-Day commemorations, the building of EuroDisney (now DisneyLand Paris) and the launch of the Eurostar service between Paris and London. Among the sporting events he covered were two Olympics, the Tour de France and the 1994 Football World Cup.

A brief interview with Nelson Mandela at a stopover in Abidjan, 1997

His first African assignments for Radio France International took him to Mali and Somalia before being named at 27 as Abidjan staff bureau chief for RFI.[3]

From 1995 to 1998 he chronicled Ivory Coast’s escalating political tension for RFI and Le Monde, as well as civil wars in Liberia[4]and Sierra Leone.[5] From 1995 Ivory Coast’s boycotted election of Henri Konan Bédié, the arrival of the mercenaries Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leone to the April 1996 street fighting in Liberia’s capital Monrovia and Jerry Rawlings’ re-election in Ghana 1996, Picard covered the entire region[6] with several trips to Nigeria including the 1997 funeral in Lagos of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti. In 1997, he was one of the foreign reporters trapped in a hotel in Freetown that got surrounded by RUF rebels.[7]

After returning to Paris and working for RFI’s reporting assignment and business desks, Picard joined Eurosport.[8]

When France 24 was launched on 6 December 2006, Picard was an opening night news presenter for the English language channel.[9] He covered events such as the 2007 French presidential election,[10] the 2008 financial crisis in Dubai, and in 2010 the Ivory Coast election and subsequent return to civil war.

Picard hosts a debate with Shashi Tharoor and Nirmala Sitharaman for the launch of France 24 in India

In 2010, Picard was named host of flagship current affairs program The France 24 Debate.[3] His panels bring together different perspectives on topics of the day[11][12] such as the 2015 Paris Climate Change Summit, Algeria's pro-democracy movement[13] and the migrant crisis.[14] Interviews have included Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari who told Picard that he wanted to negotiate with Boko Haram for the release of the 219 kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls. Picard’s shows bring together prominent newsmakers and scholars.[15] He has appeared on radio and TV debates as a guest and a moderator.[16][17][18]

Assignments have taken the show abroad[19] mostly notably to London during and after the 2016 Brexit referendum, Washington for the 2016 and 2020 US elections, Barcelona for the banned Catalan independence referendum and Egypt from the Arab Spring to the 2013 coup. He has also covered stories from Moscow which included an interview with Vladimir Pozner for a special edition after Putin’s re-election and New Delhi for the Indian launch of the channel.

On Fridays, he hosts the journalists’ roundtable The World This Week which was first launched in partnership with the International Herald Tribune and then The Daily Beast with foreign editor Christopher Dickey as regular panellist until his death in July of 2020.[20] During the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic, Picard broadcast from his home in the suburbs of Paris.[21] For the lifting of the travel restrictions between France and Germany he co-anchored the show with Deutsche Welle’s Melinda Crane at the German border.[22]