Over the past thirty years, Christophe Kenck has covered the wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone. But the forty-four days he has just spent in Ukraine are unlike anything he has known before in his career as a journalist and image reporter (JRI): firstly because this war is taking place on the ground European Union, less than 2,500 kilometers from Paris, but also because it is a “conventional” war with two armies clashing with tanks and missiles. What struck the war reporter was the exodus of populations fleeing by train or car to the west. Scenes that remind him of those of the Second World War in France, experienced by his grandparents.
Christophe Kenck also says that he was in Irpin (north-west of kyiv) on March 13, and that he passed by the exact place where twenty minutes later, the American documentary filmmaker Brent Renaud was killed. The JRI of France Télévisions helped to shelter and evacuate the cameraman wounded by bullets, member of the team of the deceased American journalist.
“At the info counter”, Christophe Kenck finally remembers with pain the death of his colleague and friend Gilles Jacquier. On January 11, 2012, they were together in Homs, Syria when four missiles fell on them. Gilles Jacquier is dead, Christophe Kenck was injured: slightly in his flesh but deep in his soul. For several years, a victim of post-traumatic stress, the reporter constantly asks himself: “why did I survive and not Gilles?”. Finally, after a two-year break, Christophe Kenck is back on the battlefield, to, he says, “not leave dictators alone”.
About the podcast: “Au Comptoir de l’Info” is France Télévisions’ first native (audio) podcast. In the form of a journalistic interview, an actor who produces public service television news — a major reporter, a cameraman, a presenter — comes to give himself up, tell, reveal the way he works. In a sound atmosphere of a coffee counter, he confides his doubts, his joys, but also his fears when he is on the ground or in the studio. Since May 2021, the podcast “At the info counter” has also received journalists from Radio France (France Inter, France Info, France Culture) at its microphone.
The series is produced by François Beaudonnet, columnist for franceinfo (channel 27), senior reporter for France 2 and columnist for the program “Nous, les Européens” on France 3. A former correspondent in Rome and Brussels, he started out on the radio where he presented the 1 p.m. news on France Inter.
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This episode was directed by Timothée Le Hec