- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

French expert: the gas crisis between Ukraine and Russia is a bluff

The gas crisis is a theatre show, which covers up rich oligarchs' internal struggles, saya a french expert. For the Russians are in reality powerless, given that Ukraine has the gas pipelines.

You're introduced as an expert with a long experience of Russian-Ukrainian-European energy issues. No mention of your other political activities (which, since the target audience is engineers, is probably A Good Thing). The Oil Drum article gets a plug, which is nice. All the quotes sound like something you've said many times here and elsewhere (and they're quoted in a favourable context), so I think they're all kosher.

Your angle is the only one presented, which might account for the omission of "controversial" statements.

I can translate the quotes (or the whole article) if anyone's interested.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Le Premier Do Thank Français

And Never Ever accept an alcoholic drink in the 'green room' ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

IF one chooses the equitable path of "wealth" distribution, score two for fuck you, profit minimizer.

IF one chooses the inequitable path of "wealth" distibution, one might earn a penalty shot, depending of course on the referee's visual acuity.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

exaggeration of affect(effect?) or something melodramatic rather refers to something that is shocking though less dramatic in reality. So, shock is provoked by an exaggeration of reality, not by truth.

In practical terms, it is still not clear whether poemless' friend considered the gas crisis a shocking surprise or rather a melodramatic event that is far less serious in reality.

People on ET have the strong advantage, when viewing the videos, of already knowing what is being said as well as what is not being said. Everything Jérôme brought up in the interviews has been discussed and challenged here before, and we trust his judgement on these issues.

An ordinary viewer of France24 has no such knowledge. Jérôme is unknown. This is the first time the viewer has seen him, and he is introduced as an editor of ET, which the average viewer has never heard of - European Tribune sounds like some kind of newspaper, but it's not on the shelves to be bought. Nobody knows he's a banker working in energy (**).

The ordinary viewer does know the face of the show's presenter, and knows the faces of regular guests. I don't know if the other guests in those interviews are regulars or not, but (ceteris paribus) the title of professor at the American university of Paris, and the Harvard logo plastered all over the other professor's video background does stack the credibility in their favour, again, for the ordinary viewer.

The facial expressions of the presenter in the first part, too, IMHO, do not help to gain Jérôme credibility towards ordinary viewers. What certainly does help Jérôme's credibility is when the other guests nod approval.

Remember, the ordinary viewer does not verify facts - he judges the performance on the day. When all the guests approve of a statement, then that is evidence of statistical correlation with the truth and makes people trust the person who makes the statement. When guests disagree, that causes people to wonder a little bit if the person making the statement can be trusted.

Jérôme did an admirable job at gaining credibility when he corrected Goldman in the second part of the interview, but my impression is that he lost a lot of credibility early which he had to claw back, and I don't know the final total. Again, credibility matters much, I think, because Jérôme has no standing with the ordinary france24 viewer to begin with.

In all the interviews, I feel that Jérôme has a tendency to make shocking statements early. Things like Ukraine doesn't pay for gas, for example. This is a shocking statement, it flies in the face of common sense. To the viewer, a person who makes such a statement is either a nutter, or (possibly) a smart person who wants to shock. Because Jérôme is unknown and has no trust capital to begin with, I believe most people put him in the nutter category. Then he has to reclaim authority by explaining things, and he certainly manages to do it. Overall, I think that's a rhetorical mistake(*).

The smiling in that case doesn't help either. When somebody makes a statement while smiling, they advertise that the statement shouldn't be taken at face value. But in the beginning, Jérôme hasn't said anything yet! So the very first thing he's saying is: dont' trust my statement, or maybe: I'm not taking my role seriously. It does not build credibility.

The other problem with making gratuitous shocking statements is that it puts the other guests on the defensive, and ipso facto sends a message to the viewers that there is no agreement here, so what's said cannot be simply trusted.

Finally, I'm not sure I agree with all the smiling during the argument with the Harvard professor. It was obvious that Jérôme was enjoying nailing him, but the question is what did it look like for ordinary viewers? For me, it's possible that Jérôme came across as argumentative - somebody who enjoys contradicting people for the sake of contradiction rather than truth. Of course facial expressions are involuntary, but I think that a face that conveyed sadness at having to correct the misinformation propagated by Goldman would be (rhetorically) preferable.

(*) It would not be such a rhetorical mistake if he was introduced as an investment banker with $NAMEOFBANK specializing in energy. Of course, he's not introduced that way, and the blunder is in forgetting that he hasn't been introduced in that way.

(**) Would Goldman have been more circumspect if he had known? He clearly didn't know, since Jérôme had to point out that he studies the gas industry as part of his job. Did the other guest and the presenter learn this factoid during the break? They seemed to me somewhat less hostile in the second part.

p.s. There's an interesting contrast with the French big debate, in which Jérôme didn't take part. It's true that in the French debate, there was no need to counter British or American narratives, but ignoring this important point, what struck me was that many of Jérôme's points arose in that debate as well, but in a much less controversial manner.

The journalist Pierre Lorrain expressed and defended many of Jérôme's ideas. I don't know if he learned them from Jérôme's articles or independently, but in terms of pure television - and I don't intend to be offensive - I think that Lorrain was better in Jérôme's role than Jérôme. He's a good television commentator worth emulating, and I applaud france24 for picking him. For example, he started off with the same idea that Ukraine doesn't pay Russia as Jérôme, but didn't try to make a shocking point out of it. He actually gained credibility straightaway (IMHO) by sharing facts like a teacher.

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