"I couldn’t believe that this was happening in front of the White House!"

Sonia Dridi is a Washington correspondent for France 24 and other francophone broadcasting stations. She recently wrote a biography about President Joe Biden called: Joe Biden: Le Pari de l’Amérique Anti-Trump, the first French biography to release before the election result. Foreign Press spoke with Dridi about her work as a foreign correspondent in both the U.S. and Egypt and her experience covering mass protests and politics. 

After the wake of George Floyd’s death, there was an evident response towards racism and police brutality in the U.S. Sonia shared that she was taking a break to take care of her newborn during this tragic moment. Yet, she decided to head to the streets and highlight these stories. 

“There were so many protests that summer against systemic racism and police brutality. I remember coming to the White House a few days after George Floyd’s death, and there was such a strong response from the police and everyone started to run around while tear gas where being launched. I couldn’t believe that this was happening in front of the White House!”

During the 2020 presidential election, Sonia and a group of other correspondents from various francophone outlets (Radio Canada, RTS, RFI) united to create the “Washington D’ici” podcast. Sonia spoke about her experience diving deep into the U.S. political spectrum alongside other correspondents covering the elections. 

“It was a wonderful experience because we all do a lot of news stories, and sometimes it’s very frustrating to go on the field and cover a story that is 2-3 minutes long…so this podcast really allowed us to talk about things that we weren’t able to talk about through news media.”

The ability to cover American politics for francophone outlets has helped Sonia understand what pressing issues and decisions influence her home country. Laws about gun control, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement, and the economy have been some of the topics that she has noticed that the French people are interested in. 

“Sometimes it might seem that we have two similar cultures, but in reality, they are such a huge gap in our way of living. So there are a lot of subjects that French people are interested to know about how it works in the U.S. and why it works like that.”

Sonia was also asked to write a biography about President Joe Biden before the election results were announced. Her book was one of the primary French-written sources to tell the story behind the current U.S. president.

“As soon as I started to research before responding to the offer, I found that he was a fascinating character and that there were many things that I ignored and the French people ignored about his life story, about his politics, and his career… I had a lot of fun writing this book, but it was very stressful too because I only had five months to have it ready.”

Towards the end of the conversation, Sonia said that she really views that being a foreign correspondent has its advantages. One of them is that Americans are more open to speaking about their perspective because it won’t be aired in their own country. 

“I felt that I was much more accepted as a foreign journalist because sometimes they would ask me who I was working for, and I said that it was for French media or Belgium media, and they would say, “Oh, ok! You are not CNN or The New York Times,” and they would talk to me.”

(Photo Credits: Paris Normandie)