“Behind the scenes at franceinfo” can be discovered in videos to highlight the production of information. With Carine Talbot, communications director of franceinfo.
To try to answer the question of distrust in the media, and in a desire for transparency, franceinfo is releasing a series of videos to highlight the production of information.
A behind-the-scenes look at the work of the editorial staff, reporters in the field, the functioning of Agence Radio France, including the jobs of programmers and technicians. To talk about it, Emmanuelle Daviet, mediator for the Radio France branches, receives Carine Talbot, communications director for franceinfo.
Emmanuelle Daviet: What objectives are you seeking to achieve by showing behind the scenes of the editorial staff? Does this correspond to a request from listeners?
Carine Talbot: So yes, the idea of this behind-the-scenes series was to rebuild trust with the public in a context where, as we know, mistrust is increasingly increasing with the media. So, we wanted to play a bit of the transparency card, and proximity too, by showing the work of the editorial staff: how our journalists work on a daily basis, how they question themselves, and moreover, they question themselves many and wonder if they are fair.
It’s a job that is very demanding, very rigorous and collective. And we wanted to show that all the choices of current affairs subjects that are carried on the air are not arbitrary.
Who is this content primarily intended for?
The challenge for us was to reach out to those who do not necessarily consume Franceinfo. The idea was to arouse their interest, their curiosity, and to get them to listen to Franceinfo, telling themselves that they would have quality and accurate information on this channel.
So of course, we also think of our loyal listeners. We imagine that they will be happy to find this content, and to find in images, the voices they know on the air. And then it will perhaps also allow them to see a little, how things play out behind the scenes, when they listen to the journalists on the air.
Does this project of transparency and pedagogy towards the public also seek to create interactivity with them?
So yes, completely. The idea of this project is to rediscover and recreate proximity and horizontality. So besides, we will soon put all these videos on the franceinfo Instagram channel, with the idea of asking for reactions from our audience, and of doing surveys, to see what they discovered from all these videos.
In these videos, what aspect of the journalistic process do you want to highlight?
The DNA of France Info is the verification of information, it is analysis, contextualization, decryption. So we want to find all these essential values that this editorial team carries. And so, afterwards, it will play out a little on how we will work with each of the editorial departments. We will perhaps put a little more emphasis when we film with the Radio France Information Verification Agency.
We will focus on how we verify a source, how we validate it with the antennas, to then broadcast it on France Info. There, for the franceinfo morning show, the first video that we broadcast for this series, we participated in an editorial conference with journalists and editors-in-chief, to show how we choose current topics, which will then be broadcast on the air.
You mentioned Instagram earlier. What other platforms can you find these videos on?
So we will find it on the FranceInfo website, we will also create short extracts on YouTube which are already installed. And then we also find them on the FranceInfo WhatsApp, which has been in place for a week, and finally on all social networks, so we will have the Twitter account. And as I told you soon on FranceInfo’s Instagram.