You too, Martine? | The Press

As well tell you, we don’t really like it when a journalist becomes a politician. I say “we”. I did not survey journalists. I am talking about myself and most of the colleagues I meet.

It’s messy. It raises unpleasant questions about impartiality. On the chronology of political temptation. On the negotiations.

Nothing illegal, reprehensible or dishonorable in itself. I actually admire the idea of ​​getting into this crazy job. Martine Biron, a colleague whom I respect, is well placed to know what she is getting into. She has just passed from the altogether comfortable role of analyst, descriptor or critic, to that of analysed, described and criticized.

Still, that backstage costume change in the middle of the show always makes me pout a bit.

Oh no, not you too, Martine?

Especially when it’s a “working” journalist. Especially when he’s a political journalist. Especially when it’s a journalist who covers behind the scenes of this power to which he tries to join.

Like when Bernard Drainville interviews PQ leader André Boisclair on Saturday and becomes his party’s candidate the following week. Or when Pierre Duchesne goes from political analyst to the National Assembly and presents himself in politics. Christine St-Pierre was also a journalist at the National Assembly, a few years before joining the Liberal Party.

I insist: politics is a demanding and perfectly honorable profession. And all the people I just mentioned have practiced journalism with professionalism.

The fact remains that these passages from one world to another, which are particularly numerous in Quebec politics, leave a sort of scratch.

Of course, as soon as a journalist is fished out by a political party, the other parties hasten to denounce the operation. It did not fail Wednesday with Martine Biron.

Except that all the political parties in Quebec have recruited journalists, from the founder of the Parti Québécois René Lévesque (at first liberal) to the ex-liberal leader Claude Ryan to Vincent Marissal at Québec solidaire – although he had left the profession. before politics, etc.

None has lessons to give, therefore.

Former Liberal minister Gaétan Barrette still asks a good question. “The Ethics Commissioner tells me that I do not have the right to sit on the board of directors of a medical clinic (without remuneration) after my political career. OK. But do you journalists have a code of ethics? You lecture everyone, but what are the rules on the transition from journalism to politics? »

The Parti Québécois also asks the same question: yesterday, Martine Biron collected the confidences off the record of everyone. Here she is now with the ruling party. Faintness.

A discomfort that we will try to exaggerate, but which will pass quickly, like all the others. Especially since if she becomes a minister, as we can guess, Martine Biron will not shame her government.

Gaétan Barrette’s question, although partisan, is still relevant. What are the rules?

The answer is that there is none. Everyone is free to stand in politics, and the voting people will settle the question.

The position of a journalist and that of an important minister cannot be put on the same footing. Neither in terms of power nor in terms of a network and valuable privileged information in a subsequent career. I don’t see how anyone could prevent someone from running in politics, if they have the courage. Nor even, like Bernard Drainville, to leave it before the end of his mandate to work on the radio – he who had for years defended those who left their post of deputy before the end, in defiance of the voter and the taxpayer in front of finance a by-election.

But neither can we act as if these spontaneous passages, without a buffer period, from journalism to politics were completely insignificant and posed no ethical problem.

These will be the first explanations that Martine Biron will have to give.

Afterwards, it would perhaps be up to the profession to finally outline some principles on the pre- and post-jump in politics for journalists. History of at least trying to reassure the public, to tell them that not everything is acceptable in all circumstances, and that we distinguish simple jumps from triple jumps, jumps with or without a pole, in height or in length…