In a very dense news period with the presidential election and the war in Ukraine, Radio France listeners are wondering about the place now occupied by Covid-19 in the news. Matthieu Mondoloni, deputy editorial director of franceinfo answers questions from listeners at the microphone of Emmanuelle Daviet, the mediator of the antennas of Radio France.
Emmanuelle Daviet: We start with this first remark from a listener: “No longer a word anywhere on the Covid which still kills nearly 150 people a day. This can only reinforce the negligence and therefore the maintenance of the pandemic which, although less severe now, is still very expensive in human lives and on sick leave.” Matthieu Mondoloni, why are there no more reports on the subject asks this listener?
Matthew Mondoloni: So, there are still reports of them, but in fact, they are much less numerous than a few months ago and it has been almost two years since this pandemic entered our lives. So there are fewer reports, that’s for sure, but also because everyone has gotten used to living with the virus. Moreover, it is the health policy as it is currently conducted in our country. It is also a question of seeing, with the last variant, it is very contagious but less dangerous, there are fewer hospitalizations, there are fewer people in intensive care.
This listener is absolutely correct. There are always people who die daily from the Covid, we remind you. We are also talking about treatments a few days ago, we talked about PaxLovid, this drug treatment which should also help Covid patients. So we continue to be attentive, we continue to make subjects, but it obviously takes up much, much less space on our antenna. And it’s also normal because, moreover, there are many other listeners who sometimes rightly found that we were talking about it a lot.
Emmanuelle Daviet: We continue with this message: “I would first like to thank you for the franceinfo site which provides free and almost real-time information that is often detailed and objective.
“I have greatly appreciated the infographics on the Covid 19 epidemic over the past two years, which were accessible from the banner at the top of the franceinfo home page and provided a global and clear vision of the evolution of epidemic.”
Internet userat franceinfo
“I obviously find it completely normal that, given current events, this banner is devoted to the war in Ukraine. However, I cannot find the page devoted to the summary of infographics on Covid-19. Would it be possible for you to put a link above in the health section, for example? Several Internet users, Matthieu Mondoloni, make this observation…
Matthew Mondoloni: It is a very good report and I discover it. So thank you to them for providing us with this information. And we can tell them that we have taken the matter up: we have sent it to the digital department at home so that we can actually look at how to put back in place or put in place this banner which simplifies access to the information of our Internet users, which is obviously important to us.
Emmanuelle Daviet: So that they don’t hesitate to give us their comments when necessary, it is obviously always taken into consideration. We continue with this question: “It seems that the situation is completely deteriorating at the hospital where beds are closing more and more with major staffing problems, vacancies among caregivers and emergency services which are considering closures. Is this true or exaggerated? Can you talk about that? ?”
Matthew Mondoloni: We talked about it. We have actually done several reports on this subject. It’s true, first of all, there are several hospitals that are concerned. We don’t go to all the hospitals, but we went to the Orleans hospital, where we did a subject at the CHU, a long-format report. We also went to the Saint-Louis hospital in Paris, where again there were problems that we talked about, which we relayed to ourselves by giving the floor to the caregivers, to the staff of these hospitals.
And finally, with “franceinfo listens to you”, you know, these itineraries that we had before the two rounds of the presidential campaign. We also went to Angoulême. So we echo each other and we continue to follow, of course, because it’s very important. The health issue, as we know, is very important. Following the pandemic we were talking about earlier with all the reminiscences that still exist today and obviously franceinfo and franceinfo reporters and journalists continue to follow this news.
Emmanuelle Daviet: Precisely, Matthieu Mondoloni, the pandemic, two years ago, imposed an accelerated treatment of the news since the situation was very evolving. Has this changed the way you work in the editorial department?
Matthew Mondoloni: So yes, already, the first immediate consequence is that it is because of this pandemic that we have created a specific service at franceinfo called the health sciences environment technologies service. We brought together different specialists, but in particular because we knew that our health specialist alone could not cover the whole of this pandemic. So we needed reinforcements. There are plenty of journalists who obviously mobilized around it, so it was a real change.
“I would say that after the other change in our practices, it is that we probably have less scientific knowledge in general, us journalists, and that is undoubtedly something that the we correct in the future.”
Matthew Mondoloniat franceinfo
What has changed is our relationship to numbers. As we are not necessarily scientists and rather sometimes literary people, we also had to learn to use these figures, that is to say that a figure alone does not necessarily mean something. Counting demonstrators, that, we knew how to do and we gave the figures of the police. We still sometimes give the figures of the forces of order and the figures of the demonstrators.
Here in this case it was “which indicators were the right ones?” Was it necessary to look at the figures for hospitalizations, the figures in intensive care, the figures for Covid patients, etc., etc. We have learned over the course of this pandemic to look at these indicators which were indicators which have evolved and which have also enabled us to provide better information.