Emmanuelle Daviet, mediator of Radio France antennas, receives Matthieu Mondoloni, deputy editorial director of franceinfo. We begin with questions from our listeners about the Winter Olympics.
Emmanuelle Daviet: We start with this fairly frequent question since last weekend. “I find it quite odda listener tells us, the promotion of the Beijing Winter Olympics, without mentioning the disastrous ecological impact, with in particular 100% artificial snow as well as the hell of the Uighurs”.
Matthieu Mondoloni, the environmental question and the political context of these Olympic Games, have they been treated on the antenna?
Matthew Mondoloni: Yes quite. We dealt with it in particular with our special envoys on the spot, whether it was the special envoys from the sports department of Radio France, or whether it was our permanent special envoy, Sébastian Berrios, present on the spot, who was also able to tell the ecological impact of these Beijing Olympics, question it.
We also had guests, including athletes from elsewhere who take part in the Olympics. We had one of the two flag bearers of the French delegation, Kevin Rolland, who on our antenna, questioned by Marc Fauvelle moreover on this subject, this ecological impact, do we have to agree to compete under these conditions, responded to the antenna. So yes, we obviously echoed this issue, which is important.
In view of the political context, listeners think that a boycott, or at least a kind of radio silence, would have been a minimum. How do you answer them?
I don’t think it’s our role to boycott. There are politicians and countries that have decided on a diplomatic boycott, they haven’t sent any representatives. France had decided not to follow him. So finally, there will be no representative since the Minister of Sports is covided, so she decided not to go there and we understand her.
On the other hand, it is not the role of the media to boycott these events. Otherwise, we could also say that we are boycotting a war, a conflict, on the pretext that we are in favor of one side or the other. This is not our case.
We remain in our position of objectivity and we are going to cover these Olympic Games, both on the sporting aspect, because there are French people who compete, because there are athletes, in general, who compete , but also on the political aspect, what I was telling you just now, that is to say that we are not going to refrain from questioning ourselves, from asking questions that can annoy, including the Chinese.
Last week, we mentioned here the listeners who reproached us for not discussing the situation in Ottawa with the “convoy of freedom”.
This week. reverse trend: listeners believe that we talk too much about the “freedom convoys” which set off on Wednesday February 9 from Bayonne and Nice, inspired by the movement launched in Canada to protest against health restrictions.
Matthieu Mondoloni, where do you place the cursor?
First of all, I remind you that we had already responded effectively, as you said last week, and we had replied that we had already started to cover this movement, and in particular, the movement in Canada.
With Franck Mathevon and you Emmanuelle, we had also echoed these beginnings of mobilization which were beginning to affect France. The cursor, it is not easy to find. It’s always the same. It’s a matter of not overdoing it, because we don’t know exactly how many people are mobilized. It is very difficult to count them.
We have a reporter who was in Nice and who, a few days ago, was able to count about 200 vehicles heading for Avignon, first of all to reach Paris, that’s what he said then , in the days that followed. So it’s difficult. We must echo it because it is a mobilization, because it is a current event. At the same time, don’t overdo it.
We try at franceinfo to keep reason in relation to the coverage of this event, but we cannot keep it quiet either, and we are obviously there to cover this news like the others.
We end with a question about the Covid. We are never given the number of daily deaths again. Why ? Isn’t that essential information, listeners ask us?
We don’t give “never again”, we give it sometimes, but less often than before. And that was also one of the questions that I had agreed with the listeners with you, Emmanuelle, during a previous column. We don’t give this info every day anymore, because it doesn’t make sense to give only this figure.
This figure should be compared with many others: the number of positive cases, the positivity rate, the virus reproduction rate, the number of hospitalizations, the number of intensive care hospitalizations. So we avoid giving it every day because, moreover, rightly, our listeners have told us that it is terribly anxiety-provoking, that sometimes it doesn’t make sense. So, we call him back when there is a reason to call him back, which was still the case a few days ago.