Assises du journalisme 2020: "Informing in the times of Covid", what has changed?

Audio 38:02

Opening of the Assises du journalisme 2020 in Tours.

Jérôme Bouvier, the organizer, is at the microphone.

Steven Jambot / RFI

By: Steven Jambot Follow |

Simon Decreuze Follow

42 min

The Media Workshop was in Tours for the 2020 International Journalism Conference entirely devoted to Covid-19.

In this program, journalists, a historian and a sociologist expose the effects of the pandemic on information, those who produce it and those who follow it.

Publicity

Les Assises du journalisme is the annual meeting of information professionals.

Objective: to question practices, discuss the economic difficulties of the media or even reflect on the place of information in society.

The theme of this special edition " 

 ".

To begin,

, president of the Journalism and Citizenship association, organizer of the Journalism Conference, explains why this choice of a single theme and the need for the event

when the health restrictions do not allow to welcome more than 200 participants.

He also announced that the initial theme “Climate emergency and journalistic responsibility” was not abandoned.

This will be the one for the next edition, in spring 2021.

From the beginning of March, the Covid became ubiquitous in French evening television news in France, which also produced

.

This is what explains

, in charge of scientific promotion at the National Audiovisual Institute (INA).

She also returns to the particular role played by the public audiovisual sector during confinement. 

During this health crisis, full of uncertainties, the public was looking for information.

So much so that digital media audiences have exploded, recalls

, deputy editor of the Journal du dimanche (JDD).

At the same time, sales of paper newspapers were complicated by the confinement which resulted in the restriction of travel and the closure of points of sale, but also by the bankruptcy of Presstalis, the main distributor of the press in France.

Most of the media have also seen their advertising revenues decrease, which can cause concern. 

A drop in income for the media gives rise to fears of repercussions on the professions in the sector, including journalists.

, media sociologist attached to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), is already sketching the first effects of the crisis on the profession while the number of inserted journalists is constantly decreasing and nearly a quarter of press card holders are in a precarious situation.

The researcher also evokes a new subject of investigation that has imposed itself on him: he works on journalists who have chosen to leave the profession. 

Finally,

, journalist and science popularizer, presenter of

on France Télévisions, provides the keys to inform and popularize in times of great uncertainty.

He also discusses the reasons that led him to launch his YouTube channel during the confinement.

The one who presents himself as a “smuggler”, and whom the bio on Twitter qualifies as “curious and enthusiastic”, gives his vision of media and information education. 

At the end of the program,

is signed by the Beninese journalist and blogger

tells how the Benin radio and television office has adapted to the pandemic by taking the

.

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