Behind the scenes of journalists who invest schools, prisons, and associations to provide media education. Eric Valmir met Basile de Bure who works with young people under the yoke of justice.
TIG, community service. A court sentence after a trial. And at La Villette, this community service means spending time with a journalist. Basile de Bure has made media education his main activity, across France, but with young people and in schools. There, it is a completely different experience that was offered to him by the prison service for integration and probation and that he decided to tell in a book: May fate change.
We are always afraid of what we do not know
And young people caught in the yoke of justice, enrolled in a program to fight against radicalization, it is easy to imagine the prejudices that can result. Prejudices that these same young people may have towards journalists, the feeling of mistrust in addition. Two parties who will meet to discover each other.
Obviously, it is not a question of lapsing into a naïve otherworldliness. Dating is not that simple. It comes up against sums of misunderstandings and misunderstandings. It takes time and unfailing sincerity in the relationship, to establish a connection between two universes that never intersect.
“Journalist, it’s a white job, it’s not for us… Same for prosecutor, lawyer or whatever, it’s only white people, we are in plumbing or in construction We don’t have the same luck as the others and you know it.“ And the journalist explains that diversity is the big challenge for newsrooms, but young people will only judge by the facts.
Meet these young people outside, individually, in their daily lives
Basile de Bure will push the experience beyond the time allowed by community service. And if the reporter seeks here to give the floor, to bear witness, he must also check, cross-check everything that is said to him, as in reporting. Gabriel, who says to himself “victim of police violence”Basile investigates, wants to find the incriminated brigade, realizes that these ripoux exist, and are prosecuted for similar facts in other cases.
There are postures that surprise Basile, especially in the relationship of young people to the police, in control operations. Basil, “surprised by the attitude of these young people, unable to keep a low profile in front of the police. In the codes of young men in working-class neighborhoods, this attitude is nevertheless unthinkable. Faced with the police, lowering your head is much more serious than be arrested. In the name of the codes of male socialization, dozens of young boys are thus embarked and condemned, for contempt on the altar of their virility. And it is useless to wait for the slightest understanding from the officers of the BAC who respond to the same injunctions In this battle of the bitumen roosters, it is better to be on the good side of the badge.”
Explaining the complexity of a reality on the ground and the need for nuance in the information is certainly the most difficult challenge to meet.
- “Sir, above all, are you for or against Charlie Hebdo”?
- “It’s a long debate, I can’t answer like that”
- “My question is simple: for or against?”
- “Already, we have to start by talking about Charlie Hebdo, explaining what a satirical newspaper is.”
- “Don’t try to confuse me, is it for or against?”
- “Aren’t you interested in discussing it?”
- “No, for or against”
- “So I’m for”
- “So, ok, I’m not talking to you…”
The debates were always animated, the participants had difficulty understanding what they considered to be gratuitous provocation. On the other hand, all admitted never having read it. And when we were turning over a copy, a burst of laughter systematically interrupted the debates: “Ah, bastards, look at that”. It was enough to read charlie to these young people, quite simply, so that the universal language of humor modifies their positions.”
You must read May fate change, the portrait of a disoriented youth who does not necessarily want to do wrong, but who does not have the codes, and lets himself be carried away by the side roads of delinquency and easy money. It’s not just a narrative about a particular media literacy, it’s the ravages of the price of ignorance. In a society radicalized on the divisive positions, it is to leave the crisis of nerves to settle down and think about what we want. Understand that on the other side of the street, there is something else. Altruism is not a disease, it is the wager of intelligence.