Listeners are surprised that the first fifteen days of May, the political guests linked to the NUPES movement were largely over-represented, in particular on your antenna, which creates an imbalance with the other political forces.
Emmanuelle Daviet: Listeners want to know how you are going to rebalance things and how speaking time should be distributed during this legislative campaign, what are the rules?
Matthew Mondoloni: First of all, indeed, there is an imbalance, but which is due to current events since you know it, at that time already, we are after the second round, there are many political parties which were a little sluggish. I am thinking in particular of the Republicans. The majority, on the other hand, on the left, as there was this signing of a so-called historic agreement by the main left-wing parties, we have many, many guests, but in particular guests, sometimes moreover, who were in contradiction or otherwise disagree.
This is the case for example of Carole Delga, the socialist. But who is still counted as a socialist even though she is against the agreement. You see, it’s a bit complicated, but these are ARCOM rules so there is an imbalance. How do we compensate for it? Quite simply by making lots of other guests on the suite. That is to say that the time given to us to balance is not only fifteen days. It’s not even monthly, it’s quarterly.
So we have three months to rebalance all that. And we are working on it obviously because there, there was a severe imbalance. So right now, for example, we’re doing like the news, especially with the different cases, rather on the side of the majority or the Republicans at the moment, we have a lot of guests from those parties who come to explain in particular on these facts, but also on the new government and the new policy which must be carried out.
We continue with the Damien Abad affair and in particular the very beginning of the affair. I read you a message: “As an assiduous listener of franceinfo, I am surprised at the treatment of the Abad affair by your journalists. Throughout last weekend, your media repeated the Mediapart news without any filter.”
Matthieu Mondoloni, what were your editorial choices for this issue?
Already, there is a permanent filter. Moreover, you can find on franceinfo.fr the charter of franceInfo which returns to the information verified by our care that we give or that we do not give. We really follow this charter.
As far as Médiapart is concerned, we quoted them quite simply because we checked the information from Médiapart, in this case, it is a testimony from two women who are identified, and of which we have had confirmation ourselves. , since we have also managed to join one of them, who testified on our antenna. So we quoted Médiapart quite simply as a brotherhood, it’s normal, they are the ones who take the case, and for us, it’s important to give credit for this case which is published in Médiapart.
It’s not a value judgment at all. It is not to discard by saying it is their information and not ours. That’s not the way we work at all. And moreover, we had a balanced editorial treatment of this affair since we gave the floor to Damien Abad himself, when he held his press conference to announce at the time that he was maintaining himself, that he was still a candidate for the legislative elections, that he remained in the government.
We gave the floor to supporters of Damien Abad, whether in the government or among his former Republican partners. So here we are, we did our usual journalistic work by giving the different points of view, the different looks on this affair.
We come to Kilian M’Bappé with this remark from a listener: “I am flabbergasted, he writes, that football can take up so much space on a public service antenna. Is a footballer’s decision whether or not to stay in a team based on information with which I can become an actor in anything? It is true that it is less complex to make football understood than the IPCC report which will have less of an audience. Yet what the IPCC clearly says, the threat to the lives of hundreds of millions of people, should keep your reporters busy.”
What does this Mathieu Mondoloni reflection inspire in you?
First of all, we talk about it a lot. Much has been said about the IPCC report, the various IPCC reports. Moreover, on our antenna, if you listen to it at the moment, we have many, many subjects which relate precisely to climate change in particular. But not only. Because you know that we now have a Prime Minister, also in charge of ecological planning, of which this is a subject that is becoming stronger, which obviously has more resonance in society, as we are also the bearers of voice of society, in general, we deal with these issues.
For football strictly speaking, I’m not going to repeat what I told you this year Emmanuelle, the number of licensees in the football world is a lot of people. No offense to people who don’t like football. So there are a lot of people who are interested in it. But above all football, it’s not just football, it’s not just 22 people playing ball on a lawn today. It is also geopolitical questions with Qatar, which we know is the owner of Paris Saint-Germain, which we know is organizing the World Cup this year in Qatar.
A World Cup elsewhere, where we also talked about the negative points, the big questions that arise around, in particular the people who were able to build the stadiums. We made topics about it. So we don’t have a dithyrambic look at football, not at all. These are also big economic issues today, football. And then after Kilian M’Bappé, whether we like him or not, he is now a phenomenon in the world of football. It is a historic decision to stay in France.
He got the phone call from two Presidents of the Republic, a former President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, a current one, Emmanuel Macron, who called him to ask him to stay. So there too, there are questions that arise and subjects that are analyzed. It is not only the cold gaze of our journalists on this question. We question him. This was also the case with the political editorial by Renaud Dély who asked the question. Why does a former president and a current president call a football player?
There is an interesting point in this listener’s question. He raises the notion of audience as if you choose your subjects according to the audience they will make. True or false ?
No it is wrong. Quite simply because audience measurement on the radio is not the same as on television. Television for example from one day to the next, they can know what were the audiences of a broadcast evening, a film or a program, etc. We are not.
On TV, they can know thanks to the internet box today in real time, almost if a subject works or not. This is not the case with radio. In fact, we never choose our subjects based on audiences. They are already declarative, so we only have them every three months. And it’s on the basis of statements from listeners who are called very regularly throughout these three months to find out what kind of radio they listen to, but never what type of subjects they listen to.