We start with this message: “I listen to franceinfo every morning and every evening to be on top of the news. Thank you for the quality work you provide! However, I noticed that subjects related to the planet (biodiversity, ‘environment, climate, etc.’ are extremely little covered (as in most mainstream media). Don’t you think that our common future deserves more media coverage?”
Emmanuelle Daviet: How do you respond to this listener?
Matthew Mondoloni: I respond to this listener that he is right in the sense that I think we are not doing enough. We try to do more, after there are plenty of other things in the news, so we systematically try to cover all the subjects, sometimes some are ahead of the news, this is the case for example when there is an IPCC report, so it’s very “chestnutish” because we say: “ah well new IPCC report, so we’re going to cover”… And in fact, where he is totally right is that today we can no longer wait for this new IPCC report or a COP that is taking place. We have to try to talk about it more, we don’t do it enough yet on franceinfo, there is a real reflection on it, which we have collectively with the whole management but also with the whole editorial staff to try to have different subjects more regularly on the air and more regularly in the morning.
In the morning indeed, as the boxes are shorter, if I dare say, there is less space, we are really on the very hot, very hard news. And afterwards, in the rest of the day, we can have more varied subjects. This is the case for subjects concerning the environment and the climate, we have to manage to rebalance all that. I agree with him entirely, I repeat.
The listeners regret that since the start of the presidential campaign, the climate, which is nevertheless their 3rd concern, has been too little addressed by journalists. What does this finding inspire in you?
So I think it’s, if we talk about the in-between rounds, we have two candidates who have been judged by many as not being the best in terms of climate commitment in relation to the program that they defended. As for the candidates before the 1st round, some had put forward these climate issues and so we talked about it, we echoed it, we made program comparators for example, on the air and there in the morning, at 8:10 a.m., we called it “Make your choice” to give listeners the opportunity to compare each other’s programs.
On the other hand, I think that it is indeed a debate, and that’s the whole difficulty I think of politicians, it’s not at all to discard me as a journalist, but I think that politicians don’t have not made a topic.
It is also up to journalists to seize the subject and ask questions to politicians?
Absolutely. You are totally right. There have been a lot of questions around energy, which is a derivative of the climate, but which is not the climate, which is not the environment. And we also discussed it in the editorial staff because we also do debriefings between us saying: here, there can’t be only energy. When we talk about wind turbines, we are talking about wind turbines with energy, but it is also a climate issue, can we do it?
And we asked questions to the various political guests we had about it, afterwards, it’s true, and once again, I’m not saying that to discard myself, we can do better, but they can do better too . That is to say that they often tend to neglect it by saying: yes then we answer at the end, a small answer on that, but we don’t go much further. So we tried to do it very honestly, probably not enough, here again I come back to the first question from the listener, I totally agree. But we are not the only ones responsible, we try to bring out these questions, after the politicians should also put it, for some in any case, more forward.
We end with another question: “Would it be possible to talk a little more about solutions to reduce our consumption, our pollution? How to show more sobriety? I think that if you approach it from a positive side it can restore the morale of the listeners, and therefore associate franceinfo with pleasant news, thus encouraging them to listen to you more, especially young people.”
What do you think of these types of recommendations? Does your channel support solutions journalism?
Matthew Mondoloni: Absolutely. We have already done it. We don’t do it in the chronicle, that is to say it’s not something regular, there isn’t a solutions journalism meeting in the schedule, on the other hand we have enough reports regularly. I’ll give you an example, at the time of the last COP, we had solution journalism reports every day for three weeks. That is: how we can do better, with positive stories of people trying to change things, and it was really very interesting.
Unfortunately, here again, to use an old journalistic adage, we often like to talk about trains that arrive late, and rarely about those that arrive on time. I’m oversimplifying a bit, but basically that’s it. That is to say that talking about things that are going well, yes, we try to do it but unfortunately very quickly, and it may be a fault in our profession, we are overtaken by things that are not going so well.
So I think that here too, there is room for progress, we can try to envisage things, we do it more in small tasks than in large paintings, in large strokes of paint, but it’s something interesting , and others do it very well, it’s something that has been developing a lot for several years now in solutions journalism, which we obviously follow with interest, and which we do in part on the air.