A coffee with… Vanessa Destiné | The privilege of hearing Vanessa

At only 32 years old, Vanessa Destiné has an in-depth knowledge of the Quebec media because she knows them from the inside. It has gone through practically all the networks and empires – Quebecor, Radio-Canada, Télé-Québec, Noovo, ARTV, Rouge FM, QUB radio, etc. – and by all platforms (TV, radio, web) by collaborating on programs like Decolonizing History, In the media, Back to culture, We’ll tell each other, The day (is still young), Oil on the fire…

In short, as for many millennials, his CV is dizzying and not very attached to a particular “house”. His most recent project? The keys to the house, a very informative documentary series on the housing crisis in Quebec broadcast… on Savoir media! And who combines what she loves about her work, which is solution journalism, social justice and popularization. But she also really likes the frosty side of infotainment, the mix of popular culture and serious analysis, admiring what is being done on the web, which she finds freer than TV. When she started in the Radio-Canada web newsroom, NowThis, Vox, AJ+ or Buzzfeed were developing, and had a big impact on her, because they reached people her age.

But when did she get hooked on the job?

“Never and I still haven’t,” she replies, which makes me burst out laughing. It’s this frankness that I love about this girl who speaks out loud and doesn’t hesitate to criticize the weaknesses of a profession that is particularly unpopular in the polls. “It’s a profession that the world does not like and at some point we will have to accept it and review our position of humility,” she said.

I admit it, I’m a fan even if I sometimes say “ayoye” when reading his status on social networks. She is from the generation of the student crisis of 2012, who will never forget, I believe, the treatment that the mainstream media gave her.

She has often been told to be careful what she says, so as not to harm her career, but she is not afraid of anything, because being a journalist was not her life’s dream anyway. More a mishap, according to her. Vanessa Destiné saw herself working in international cooperation, climbing the ladder and, why not, becoming a diplomat.

“I am very aware of the different issues, capacities and limits of almost all newsrooms in Quebec, with the exception of English-language media, which I really know less about. What greatly dictates the treatment of news in Quebec is really the corporate culture. This is what will affect our interests and our blind spots. »

She deplores laziness and bad faith on certain subjects. “That’s what makes you feel like you’re right all the time and have everything figured out. The job journalists is literally to dig into subjects so that Mr. and Mrs. Everybody who does not have time to read The second sex of Simone de Beauvoir understand better. Perhaps we should go back behind the table and read more before expressing ourselves. That’s why I’m hard on our environment, which doesn’t have that many critics, for the power we have in society. As I arrive with a mind-blowing Facebook status, excuse me, but I’m a rock against Goliath. If you’re crying all day long about the rest of society, you’re capable of taking it. »

She recalls that it is very recent, the fact that we are interested in the composition of newsrooms in Quebec. “Journalists are good at talking about problems of discrimination and the shortcomings of other professional orders, but no one talks about journalists because that would force us to talk about competitors and it would quickly backfire. The class report and the “nepo babies” in the newsrooms, we must talk about it too. There are not many people to carry this ball, and I decided to do it because I have absolutely nothing to lose and I have no particular attachment to this environment. If my career ends tomorrow, I’ll be fine. I will do something else. »

Raised by her father

But quite the opposite is happening. We tear up Vanessa Destiné, who is far from being a “nepo baby” – this American term, derived from the word “nepotism”, designates the children of stars who rise quickly in the star system, among other things because they have famous parents.

She was born in 1990 in Montreal to Haitian parents who met in Quebec. She knew very little of her mother, who suffered from serious mental health problems, and was raised by her father, an uneducated man who lived through the crosses of many immigrants. “In my career, I sometimes hear the word ‘feminazi’ and that men also suffer. I know it, I am the first witness to the suffering of men. I saw my father cry at a very young age, because at one point, the pressure of being an immigrant man struggling to raise a child alone, without resources… It was an anomaly, in those days, to having a single father, not just among Haitians. »

Her father put all his money into educating his daughter, who went to private school, to be someone. A classic for immigrant parents, often a heavy burden for their children.

“His life trajectory made it impossible for him,” she says. You think you’re coming to live the American dream and you end up in a factory where you’re called N-word all day long and the slightest step in the hierarchy, you are always sent back to your black status. That’s what happened to my father. Not only are these low-paying jobs, which are brutal on the body, with shitty hours in hard-to-reach places, but they are affronts to dignity all the time. You are already broken physically and systemic racism is that it also destroys the spirit. »

Who is emotional?

So the “woke threat”, you guessed it, she doesn’t believe it. You can call her a “woke”, she doesn’t care, but never tell her that she is an activist, because she thinks that is an insult to the real activists who work on the ground.

“It’s emotional on both sides, but there is an emotionality that we cannot forgive minorities, while the majority swims in it on a daily basis. If we take the example of the word that begins with N, we accuse the black community of being super emotional, but it’s always white people who talk about it and who freak out at the idea of ​​​​putting a warning at the beginning of The little life. »

Because her father worked a lot, Vanessa Destiné was raised by Quebec television. She admired journalists like Jean-François Lépine, Raymond Saint-Pierre or Joyce Napier. Her biggest role model was Sonia Benezra and she believed for a long time that Francine Grimaldi was black.

One of the highlights of her life was photographing herself with Michèle Richard, whom she adores, and she is the first to scream because Celine Dion is not on the list of the best singers in the world. RollingStone. Because Vanessa Destiné also claims her right to lightness and fun, so don’t call her in panic only when there is a crisis around an issue of racism, she might tell you no. Because she has so many other strings to her bow and she knows it.

It would be necessary to arrange not to lose it. I think it would be a shame for the profession which has the privilege of having him in its ranks, more than on its side.

In an earlier version of this text, we identified Savoir media by its former name, Canal Savoir. Our apologies.