Sarah Pacht
Connector Contributor

Alice Sedar, French Journalist, Shares Experiences with Students

When Alice Sedar had trouble getting past security in a flooded Prague, she pleaded with a camera man,“Tell them I’m your assistant,” she said.

Sedar, an international journalist, was on-hand for a lecture about international reporting Wednesday, March 5, in celebration of Francophonie month, honoring the French culture and language. The event was co-sponsored by the cultural studies and English departments.

Sedar, who speaks French, English, Spanish and German, was an editor and journalist for French and American news outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, NBC news and CBS news in France for 20 years. She grew up in Paris as the daughter of a French mother and an American father, learning two cultures, two languages and two perspectives.

“That had helped me quite a bit when I started being a reporter, trying to look at different perspectives,” she said.

Sedar talked about how she covered 9/11 when she was in France. She had to make people care and explain parts of the story that French citizens would not understand, she said.

“I had to explain to a French audience why the debate about individual liberties during the Patriotic [sic] Act debate in Congress was so important for the Americans,” she said. “Individual liberties were curtailed in France a long time ago.”

She said that foreign reporting is similar to domestic reporting in that the same skills are used, except foreign reporting needs a little more. “I always tell my students ‘Use your senses.’ What you see is one thing,” she said, “but also what you hear, what you smell is very important.”

Sedar said that you have to use your senses to help the audience fully understand what is going on, even though they are not there.

Sedar said how difficult it can be to be sent somewhere without having time to research the place or the issues going on there before you got there. “What do you do when you’re shipped somewhere and you have no idea what might happen?” she said.

She said that most of her research she did as she went. Sometimes her first source of information was from the passenger next to her on the flight to that country.

It is difficult to get stories at times, but persistence is key, said Sedar. The city of Prague was barricaded off due to flooding, but that she still managed to get past the barriers to get the story, she said.

“I saw a tall man with a camera and I started running like crazy behind this tall man and I introduced myself,” she said. “I said, ‘Just say I’m your assistant.’ And he got me in.”