how Radio France journalists deal with the war in the Middle East

Radio France journalists answer questions from listeners about the treatment of the conflict between Hamas and Israel since October 7.

On the occasion of Médias en Seine, organized by Radio France and the Les Echos/Le Parisien group, open house operation on news, this Wednesday, November 22. Journalists explain their working methods by answering questions from listeners. Since the start of the war in the Middle East on October 7, mediator Emmanuelle Daviet has received thousands of letters. The remarks and criticisms demonstrate the need to explain the editorial choices and the way in which journalists cover the conflict on the ground. Franck Mathevon, director of international information at Radio France, and Farida Nouar, senior reporter at franceinfo, respond.

Emmanuel Daviet: Some listeners believe that the treatment of this conflict is pro-Israeli. Others consider him to be pro-Palestinian. Is it really possible to ensure a balanced and impartial perspective of this conflict?

Frank Mathevon: This is rather good news if our listeners are divided. That means we’re probably pretty balanced. We know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a very sensitive subject that is extremely polarizing. It’s almost impossible for some of our listeners to put themselves in the other side’s shoes and I make no judgment on that. But this requires us to demonstrate exemplary rigor. We are extremely vigilant about all the information we give on air. We of course verify every piece of information, we cite our sources and we strive to make both Palestinian and Israeli voices heard. It is obviously very complicated in this conflict, for a very simple reason: we can send reporters to Israel but in the Gaza Strip, the area is closed to journalists. We have reporters on the Palestinian side in the West Bank, but we cover the Gaza tragedy remotely, with testimonies collected by voice notes with a telephone network which is sometimes very unstable. So it’s extremely complicated. I add to this a difficulty: we must be careful not to forget the other side, whatever the moment of the war, it is very important.

Auditors question the way in which the death toll figures are presented. Here is the message from one of them: “Covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not easy and your radio does it with great competence. However, one point regularly bothers me in reporting on the terrible Palestinian death toll, journalists quote the toll saying ‘according to Hamas ‘. Why give any credibility to this organization by citing it as a source worthy of interest?’

Hamas, let us remember, is a movement classified as terrorist by several Western countries. But it is nonetheless the organization that governs the Gaza Strip. There have been elections, they go back a long time, to 2006, but today there is an administration in the Gaza Strip, elected officials. Generally speaking, the figures from the Hamas Ministry of Health are considered reliable by the UN, by NGOs and by several independent observers, so we take into account the assessments put forward by Hamas. This does not mean that we take these figures at face value. An example: on October 18, local authorities spoke of several hundred deaths after an explosion in a hospital in Gaza. Our investigation and that of several other media showed that this toll was overestimated. So we are not just giving an assessment without verification, but the figures from the Gaza authorities seem to us to be important information to provide to our listeners.

Farida Nouar, you arrived in Israel on October 13 and stayed for twelve days in the south of the country. What are the working conditions in the field?

Farida Nouar: When I arrive, a week after the attacks, I arrive in a country that is still in shock, with rocket alerts, with the fear that the Hamas attackers are still there in the south where I join others journalists from Radio France. It’s a war zone so we have our bulletproof vests, not always with us, but always in the trunk. And we have this hypervigilance which is activated on a daily basis and which is multiplied when we go to towns which are a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip, such as for example Zderot. There we turn quickly and we leave quickly because there are still rockets fired. For the rest, Israelis talk to us quite easily, whether in the street, in associations or on the ground. I found it to be quite easy on the mic. And then there is also everything that has been made easier for us by the Israeli authorities. We had access to the kibbutz, the sites of the killings. We had access to morgues. Usually, to go to these places you need permissions. It’s more or less long. And there, we are completely aware of it, it is part of a communication strategy, but we go there and we discuss it before, with our editorial staff in Paris. We’re going there because we need to document this conflict. We have to go and see with our own eyes what is happening, even if emotionally it is not necessarily obvious when we go to the morgue, when we go to funerals. But we specify that it is the Israeli authorities who invite us. It is systematically mentioned in the report.

A listener wrote us this message: “Do your journalists in the field work with fixers? If so, what are the guarantees that the fixer is neutral in this conflict to find contacts for the journalists?

A fixer is the person who welcomes us when we arrive in the country. This is the person who translates for us, who finds people to talk to, who sets up appointments for us, who gets us out of sometimes delicate situations. He is a person who helps us understand what is happening. We all worked with fixers in Israel, whom we found thanks to Radio France correspondents in Jerusalem. Thibault Lefèvre, who opened his contact book to us. Neutrality is a very good question. Just test our fixer. For example, my fixer, I asked her to ask Israelis if the government should be held accountable for what happened on October 7th. And that’s what she did with translations that went both ways. If she had been reluctant to ask my question, that would have told me something about her neutrality. If a fixer tries to intoxicate and disorient us to pull us in one direction rather than another, we feel it, so we separate ourselves from it. We are not sealed with him or her and we find someone else to carry out our mission.