Radio France Internationale


Radio France Internationale, usually referred to as RFI, is a French public radio service that broadcasts in Paris and all over the world. With 35.6 million listeners in 2008, it is one of the most listened to international radio stations in the world, along with BBC World Service, Voice of America and China Radio International.
RFI broadcasts 24 hours per day across the world in French and in 12 other languages in FM, shortwave, medium wave, satellite and on its website. It is a channel of the state company France Médias Monde. The majority of shortwave transmissions are in French and Hausa but also includes some hours of Swahili, Portuguese, Mandinka, and Russian.
RFI was created in 1975 as part of Radio France by the Government of France, and replaced the Poste Colonial, Paris-Mondial, Radio Paris, a private station which was commandeered by the Germans during the occupation of France, and the Voice of France which was operated by the Vichy regime from 1941 to 1944, RTF Radio Paris and ORTF Radio Paris. In 1986 the French Parliament changed the law to allow RFI to operate independently of Radio France.
RFI operates under the auspices and primary budget of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. It broadcasts primarily in French, but also in English, Swahili, Hausa, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Persian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian and as of 2015, Manding. It also owns Monte Carlo Doualiya, which produces Arabic programmes in Paris, and airs them from a transmitter in Cyprus to audiences across the Middle East and North Africa.

Incidents

On 17 September 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 17 May 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.
On 2 November 2013, RFI reporting team Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon were murdered while covering the Mali elections. The United Nations set their death date to commemorate the International Day of Impunity each year.

Podcasts

RFI offers a daily podcast in simple French, accessible via iTunes, named Journal en français facile. There are also several other podcasts including the weekly Afrique Presse, which is hosted by Assane Diop and discusses the most important news in Africa that week.

Transmission network

On shortwave, RFI primarily transmits from a relay station in Issoudun but also leases airtime from a relay station in Madagascar which was formerly operated by Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
TDF Group previously operated shortwave relay stations in Allouis, France, and French Guiana but shut them down some years ago due to financial concerns.