Fabrice Fries is the president and CEO of Agence France-Presse (AFP), one of the world’s largest news agencies. AFP is present in more than 150 countries in six languages with 2,400 employees. It publishes 4,000 dispatches per day, but also photos and videos intended mainly for the media. It has been at the heart of a controversy since the outbreak of war in the Middle East, criticized for an alleged lack of impartiality.
franceinfo: How many journalists from your agency are present in the Gaza Strip and Israel?
Fabrice Fries: Today, we have around sixty journalists in the region for texts, photos and videos. Normally, we have an office in Jerusalem with 20 employees. In Gaza, we have nine employees, including seven journalists, and in Ramallah, four. And special correspondents are being added to strengthen this team.
Is this the biggest? “quota” sent by AFP to cover a news story?
At the moment, we have 35 journalists permanently in Ukraine, so the staff is larger to cover the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Is this the most difficult conflict that the AFP has had to cover?
This is what all the editors-in-chief of all the major international media say when they meet together. They have WhatsApp chat groups and I know that, for many, it’s a kind of group therapy because it’s so difficult.
Is it due to danger? To the manipulation of information?
A bit of all that, but above all the historical and passionate charge of this conflict which has crossed this country for 70 years now and which pits the Israelis against the Palestinians.
“It’s an extremely passionate conflict, so it’s normal that it resonates in the editorial offices.”
Fabrice Fries, CEO of AFPat franceinfo
This also resonates within the AFP. Are there tensions or at least debates, perhaps heated, between certain AFP journalists?
Both. But we have tensions and debates on all the major subjects, so it’s normal in this case. Our role is to stay on our line which is not always understood. The profession of agent is not very well known, precisely because we do not address the general public. Our role is to provide media journalists with raw, primary information and what you want are facts corroborated by precise sources and context.
Except that AFP dispatches are sometimes found as is on the Internet.
Yes, it’s a tribute to us. But if the role of the media was just that, you wouldn’t exist. The role of the media is to have an editorial line, to provide commentary, to produce editorials, qualitative papers with very high added value. We at AFP, our role is to provide this verified primary information, which is also very important in the context of massive disinformation that we are experiencing.
For you, is it a comment to say that Hamas is a terrorist group? What the AFP refuses to do.
It is a qualifier and therefore for 20 years, the agency’s internal rule has been not to use this qualifier.
For no one, for no group?
For no group, no matter how horrible. We did not use it for Al-Qaeda, for Daesh, for Boko Haram. So it’s a rule that is very well known at the agency, which is absolutely not contested and which is well known to our media clients. But I understand that it is difficult to make this understood to the general public, especially in this very emotional context.
But why this rule?
This rule because precisely, our role is to provide facts and not to qualify them. It is your role, you, the media, to qualify them. Hamas, it’s a fact, it’s not my judgment as a citizen, but there, you question the head of a press agency, Hamas is not considered a terrorist organization Urbi and orbi.
It is qualified as a terrorist organization by the European Union, France, and the United States.
So, this is exactly what we say when we talk about Hamas. We say Hamas, labeled a terrorist organization by the European Union, Israel, the United States and some others, because our clients are the world’s media. Some media will say for themselves, and this naturally poses no problem for us, that Hamas is a terrorist group. Others will take our definition or others will define it as a Palestinian Islamist movement.
Have there been any debates about this rule?
None. This rule is very well understood, which is why we were a little stunned to see the scale that this controversy had taken.
On October 17, you took at face value a Hamas claim that hundreds of people were killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital. However, to this day, there was nothing to know who had fired this missile, and we still do not know its origin. There, you relayed fake news from a group that had just killed hundreds of Israelis. How can you give credit to such information and give it without having verified it?
So we gave the source which was Hamas. Its very important. It was not given as an established fact. It should have been said that we did not have the means to verify this information ourselves. That was a mistake. We quickly asked the Israeli side to comment. They told us within fifteen minutes that they would come back to us. It took them three hours to return with denials. In the meantime, the information was gone.
“It so happened that I was in Lebanon that day and I saw all our colleagues who were watching this news on social networks that we had not yet given as an agency.”
Fabrice Fries, CEO of AFPat franceinfo
The difficulty of organizing it in the field is the pressure of real time.
Have you changed your rules since what you describe as an error?
Of course, regarding these attributions, we rather recalled the rules of “sourcing“ which are inherent to all agency work.
Do you understand that some people may no longer trust you, doubt your credibility and therefore your impartiality?
I think they are wrong. On the contrary, they should appreciate this extremely valuable work that the agency does which cannot take sides. His only bias is that of the facts. It is extremely difficult and valuable work and we should be proud, including in France, of the fantastic work that journalists accomplish on the ground, because they do it in extremely difficult conditions.
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