According to what criteria does the editorial staff of franceinfo decide that a news item or an act of violence deserves journalistic treatment? Florent Guyotat, deputy editorial director answers questions from listeners with the mediator of Radio France antennas.
How the editorial staff of franceinfo decides whether or not to cover a news item. What are the determining criteria? Florent Guyotat, deputy editorial director answers questions from listeners with Emmanuelle Daviet, mediator for Radio France antennas.
Emmanuelle Daviet: What are the rules, the criteria that the editorial staff uses to follow or not follow a news item?
Florent Guyotat: So there is a simple rule, it is that we speak of a news item when we consider that it corresponds to an evolution of our society, and to a broader phenomenon, within our society. I will give you an example, the one that took place in Pas-de-Calais this week. You may have heard, there are four minors who have been charged after the suicide of a 13-year-old girl. We decided to talk about this news item because it corresponds to a broader phenomenon, that of school bullying, school bullying which is part of the concerns of our society.
You have also heard on our antenna that there are many prevention campaigns that have been put in place, and that we felt that this news item should be dealt with for these reasons. This week, you also heard what happened in Reims, the death of a nurse, the serious injuries inflicted on a caregiver by an unbalanced person. Here too, we thought it was important to mention it on the air, because it caused an emotion among the caregivers, including Djillali Annane, a doctor-resuscitator who testified on our antenna.
Djillali Annane : “Anger because it’s not a new fact, it’s not something unfortunately unexpected. We see, we see in our daily lives. For me, it’s been more than 35 years now that every morning , I go to the hospital. Well, for about ten years we have seen a considerable increase in violence, against caregivers and health professionals in general”. The resuscitator, Djillali Annane, interviewed Wednesday May 24 on franceInfo.
Florent Guyotat: You finally have another news item that we talked a lot about this week on franceinfo and on other antennas. It is the death of these three police officers from the Roubaix police station. Last weekend, they were killed when they collided with a car that was being driven by a man who was under the influence of cannabis and alcohol. It first caused a very strong emotion within the police, and then within the population. So, we also decided to talk about this news item.
Emmanuelle Daviet: Addressing the phenomena of violence necessarily means addressing a very political subject. Moreover, during the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron returned to the violence within society, using the term “decivilization” which is not neutral. We know that the media play a determining role in this perception of violence by the general public. So how did franceinfo seize the subject? Does it spark debates at editorial conferences?
Of course there are debates within our editorial staff, and we try to be as fair as possible, as measured as possible. All of this raises the question of violence within our society. And the fundamental question, it seems to me, is: is society more violent than before? This is a question that we try to answer regularly when this type of news item occurs. We also give the floor to people with hindsight, and who have quantified expertise. We asked the question in particular this week to Renée Zauberman. She is a sociologist and research director emeritus at the CNRS.
Renee Zauberman: “Nationally, physical violence remains at an overall low level, although there are areas that escape this overall diagnosis. What does an overall low level mean? are stable. They are at an extremely low level, which is the European level, around 1 to 2 per 100,000 inhabitants. This is the standard criterion. By way of comparison, at the international level, we observe for example in Central America or in South Africa, rates which are of the order of 50 per 100,000 inhabitants.
What we observe on the upper level, on the other hand, are violence that we have called contactless. All that is askance, insults, insults, threats, roughness of life, of daily life, verbal aggression in particular. And there, we are at a level that is much higher since we are over two years, between 14 and 16% of the population who, when questioned, say they have been victims of this kind of violence.
Emmanuelle Daviet: Florent Guyotat, giving the floor to academics, to experts who have been involved in research for a long time, is this a way for you to avoid sensationalism, to create buzz, or all simply to trivialize news items?
Florent Guyotat: It’s exactly that. We are careful to avoid a distorted or exaggerated view of the situation in our country, to put it bluntly. We don’t want to give a vision of a France that would be on fire and sword, which would obviously be exaggerated, and that’s why we need these experts, to listen to them, so that they can give a vision with hindsight, which allows each of our listeners to also take a step back and form an opinion.