Masks and masquerade

Audio 02:33

By: Amaury de Rochegonde Follow

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, how journalists are coping with health risks when many newsrooms have switched to telework.

Publicity

The columnists, and sometimes the presenters or the reporters, in short all the journalists who are not essential to the functioning of the media have since Tuesday experienced teleworking. Europe 1, for example, is piloted almost entirely remotely with morning shows performed from the presenter's home. At Radio France as at RFI-France 24 or at France Televisions, the guests are now interviewed in duplex. Remains a strangeness: why do the news channels continue to show trays with doctors, guests or consultants a meter apart without a protective mask? Of course, we suspect that an epidemiologist has the means to test himself, but what about a political guest like Roselyne Bachelot that we saw on Friday on the set of LCI?

Certainly, the mask is not fitting on TV. It is even, let's say, anxiety-provoking. But what could be better than masked actors on the set if we want to raise awareness of the virulence of the epidemic? Reporters should also appear under cover, at least when they are in places of care or in epidemic homes. If their security is not guaranteed, they can also exercise their right of withdrawal, according to the National Union of Journalists.

Only here, where it gets complicated is that masks, precisely there is a lack. And necessarily wear one while it is reserved for health professions who find it difficult to find in these times of shortage would be shocking. Jean-Paul Hamon, the president of the Federation of the doctors of France, incriminates the administration under Nicolas Sarkozy which would have decided to save 15 million euros by not renewing a large stock of masks.

But there was also, according to him, a guilty failure to anticipate the government when masks were still being sold abroad at the end of January. According to Michel Leroy, the president of the Paris pharmacists union chamber that we had on the phone, 120,000 FFP2 masks that were to be delivered in Ile de France were not delivered this week by the company Geodis. Has the distributor received them? Were they stolen? What is certain is that it is impossible at present to supply all the doctors and nurses. And even less paramedical professionals like home care. Obviously, journalists will pass after even if they have been exposed to the virus by politicians. Speaking of "masquerade", about the municipal elections, the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn did not think so badly.

► Read also : Criticized on the shortage of masks, the government defends itself

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