Journalism: how to tell the world?

The flash at 3:30 p.m. in RFI studio 31 on September 23, 2017. Christophe Carmarans / RFI

Text by: Arnaud Jouve Follow

16 min

As we commemorate, on November 2, 2020, the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, take a look at journalism today.

Interview with Vincent Goulet, media sociologist.

Publicity

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Researcher and teacher, sociologist Vincent Goulet, specialized in media sociology, former lecturer at the University of Lorraine, lecturer at the University of Friborg in Germany, is the author of

(INA editions).

RFI: In many countries, information is often the object of strong criticism and unfortunately sometimes journalists are the first victims.

Vincent Goulet, is this information exercise less well accepted today?

Vincent Goulet:

Journalists and the media to which they contribute form “a media field”, a whole system of relations and interrelationships, which itself is inscribed in what we can call the public space and the functioning of a representative democracy with the election but also with other regulatory systems.

The current development and the violence to which journalists are victims may show that there is a transformation in the functioning of this information production space and undoubtedly a weakening of the position of journalists.

The autonomy of journalists is a little weaker, more difficult, they are more dependent on other logics which are not those of their profession.

Knowing what journalism is and even more "good journalism" is always an issue of struggles between different people, between journalists and non journalists to say: " 

 ”.

In France and in Europe in general, the professional position of journalists is currently in difficulty compared to what is expected of them in the traditional functioning of representative democracies.

There is the independent journalist, incorruptible, who makes detailed, factual investigations, who is always a little the model of journalism, ready precisely " 

 ".

But in the sociology of the media, it has also been shown that journalists are relatively close to, dependent or influenced by a political logic, therefore of those who are in the functions of power, and they are also more and more dependent on an economic logic. , because you have to have an audience, you have to sell these media in order to be remunerated.

There have been a lot of transformations lately in these two logics which strongly structure the journalistic space.

It is by thinking together these two logics that we can come to understand what is happening for the journalistic profession, at least for those who want to do quality journalism.

How are these logics expressed in journalistic activity?

In France, for example, there are fewer journalists than before.

We are no longer recruiting, since 2009 there are fewer and fewer journalists.

In ten years, we have gone from 37,000 to 34,000 press cards.

On the other hand, we also see the way people consume information.

The willingness to pay for information continues to decline.

A few days ago, an Ipsos study published by

said that only 15% of French people are ready to pay on the internet for quality information.

It is one of the lowest rates in the world - the average is 27% - which means that the way to finance journalistic work is increasingly problematic.

Therefore, the logic of audience and competition means that the journalist is obliged to sell, to over-sell his work in a different way than he did before.

We must be careful not to idealize the past, but overall, the way of prioritizing information, the way it is put online, the way of titling or the way to enter a subject, largely escapes the old professional codes. .

For example, for the newspaper

, between the paper newspaper and the newspaper on the website, there is a big gap, another hierarchy, another way of presenting information.

In addition, as through digital social networks or filtering by search engines like Google, there are bits of information, which are taken and which are disseminated to a readership that is no longer really identified.

There is a sort of loss of control by journalists themselves, as producers of cultural goods, over their own activity, over their own production, and the logic of dissemination also escapes the editorial staff.

So, we can see that there is a kind of fragility of journalists to animate the public space in a democracy or in a relatively peaceful society where we have to discuss public problems, deconstruct, find the right words. to designate things, and there as a group, journalists no longer have the possibility of imposing, "of writing the social" as we said with Philippe Ponet in the 2009 issue of the journal

.

Because of these digital, economic transformations (the free press, then the web), writing for social media has become more and more difficult for journalists.

French press review.

FMM Graphic Studio

On the other hand, because of economic crises, regime crises, there is a tendency to want to solve problems quickly and often in a somewhat definitive way.

Political speech or those of individuals who claim the functions of control and government are taking more and more shortcuts, we put into circulation words that do not correspond to the reality of things on the ground, for electoral purposes or to reinforce their power, to take a sort of short-term control of the population… and we can see that it works to a certain extent.

We have seen it with authoritarian presidents, with Donald Trump in the United States, with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey or Viktor Orban in Europe and many others.

These are trends that take advantage of the global weakening of the journalistic space to impose another way of speaking about what is happening in society, of making events intelligible and which also relies on other mediation spaces. like internet networks.

It is another way of disseminating cultural goods which gives meaning to our existence which puts us in contact with each other, which means that we no longer have the same way of discussing the problems facing a society. .

And there can be violence since there is a kind of vacuum that is left by the democratic debate, so some demagogic personalities rush into it to consolidate their position, sometimes by banning or intimidating the media and the journalists who do so. embarrass.

Is journalism the vector of a historical narrative?

We go back a little to the 19th century in the functioning of the media and journalists.

During that time, we didn't really speak of a journalist, we rather used the term publicist.

They were people who wrote in newspapers, who took a stand, who sometimes made inquiries, but there were no rules of inquiry as solid as now.

Today, we must cross-check the information, give the floor, for and against, to everyone, collect, put in context, in perspective, we do a work of explanation, we try to understand the ins and the outs of a fact.

These are all things that have developed during the 20th century.

In the 19th century, there was a lot of press and it was not expensive, it was the penny press, the popular press equivalent of radio stations and 24-hour news channels, it was at this time. when we invented that.

There wasn't a rigor like now, it was legitimate to do literature, politics, journalism at the same time, all of this being a little mixed up.

But if we now look at certain news channels, or even other types of media in the digital space, we see that we are returning to a form of journalism of comments, of ideas, which has always been important in France. but which takes over a little since it is not expensive to produce.

We often find there a little coffee discussions with people a little more informed than others, but it stays there;

it is talking about society but at a lower cost, by circulating ideas, representations, concepts that appeal to listeners since it somewhat reinforces their prejudices, their way of seeing things, and therefore there we are very frankly in a period of hindsight, back to a much more confused nineteenth-century idea of ​​how to define correct journalism which would aim to inform democratic debate.

French President Emmanuel Macron during the European Summit on October 17, 2018 in Brussels.

REUTERS / Toby Melville

Is the journalist necessarily political even if he wants to be independent?

Whatever he does, the journalist acts in the political space, even if he must be as rigorous as possible: he circulates framing on the way of seeing society, representations which will inevitably have political effects.

It is eminently political work.

You cannot pretend to be an apolitical journalist.

What we can possibly do is to explain clearly that depending on our own political culture, we are going to approach such and such a subject in such a way.

This is why the media form a sort of collective concert: each newspaper has its role to play, its type of investigation, the subjects on which it will insist, the words it will put into circulation or the way which he will not take again words.

On the issue of Islamist terrorism, there is, currently in France, a very interesting field of study to try to see how certain words appear, how certain words are imposed by the State.

When French President Emmanuel Macron talks about separatism, it is a word he invented, that he coined.

What does it correspond to?

What does he mean by that?

There was a whole kind of politico-journalistic-citizen exegesis to try to understand, and then the events make that it takes another form: now we speak of Islamo-fascism.

Is that a word that we can use?

What does that mean ?

All this work around the meaning of words, the acceptance of words, the way they circulate in the social space, it is first of all the journalists who are the custodians of it and who train it, even if, moreover, in addition, they are dependent on political sources and audience logic to use these words.

Their responsibility is immense, but their autonomy to carry out this task has somehow deteriorated.

Is this lack of confidence in journalists a reflection of society?

Often, the media space is indeed a kind of reflection of society.

The way it is structured largely depends on how the company is structured.

Journalist Albert du Roy said: “ 

 ”.

The word is a little harsh, but the formula is fair enough and points primarily to the responsibility of the elites.

In France, part of the population no longer trusts journalists, but there has always been a part that has never trusted.

Every year, the

newspaper

carries out a survey on "French people's confidence in the media" which always gives more or less the same results.

Some years it's worse than others, but basically when you ask the question: " 

 "50% of people say radio is credible, 46% of people think television is credible.

And especially when we ask: " 

 "68% of people answer no, they are not independent, 60% of the people questioned also consider them" 

 ".

Even if it is only a survey, that is to say that we ask the question to people who have never asked themselves, the question and that this type of exercise often gives slightly biased answers , overall there is a sort of mistrust of the independence of journalists.

Then, other categories feel particularly downgraded, neglected, little listened to.

Take for example the "yellow vests", a certain category of the population which undergoes a form of downgrading, or the young people who are failing at school ... for them journalists are part of the language of power, government, Police state and therefore inevitably, they are traitors, well in any case adversaries, even enemies in a way.

There is a kind of gulf here, an increasingly important hiatus between certain sections of the population who no longer have confidence in the institutions and a large part of the journalists who are put on the side of the forces of supervision of society. and therefore institutions, and this is quite worrying for the functioning of a democratic society like ours.

The media are regularly attacked in connection with the demonstrations of the yellow vests, January 12, 2019. Ludovic MARIN / AFP

At the moment, we are in a very hostile period, we see it for example with the reactions to the cartoons.

Does this rejection, in a large part of the world, of this freedom of expression also affect freedom of the press?

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not quite the same thing.

Cartoons are one thing and offending people is another thing.

We have known for a long time that journalism is not a very stable profession, there are areas of passage.

What Denis Ruellan said in his book

 (PUG edition) is still valid.

As he explained, there are always struggles over who is a journalist and who is not.

Can we say, for example, that writing

is journalism?

You have to ask the question, it is satirical press, but is it journalism in the sense of investigative journalism, of investigation as we learn in journalism schools?

No, it's more of the expression press.

It is in the name of freedom of expression, of freedoms that France considers fundamental, that we must defend this freedom to publish what we want.

But it is perhaps not journalism in the narrowest sense of the word, it is more opinion journalism, of commentary in a way.

We have every interest in clearly distinguishing between things to obviously defend our fundamental rights, but also to know what we are talking about.

Secularism is another example.

It is first of all a way of regulating the religious convictions of citizens which is a fundamental freedom.

It is not the prohibition of religious expression in the public space, it is just a mode of regulation, and not an injunction to appreciate caricatures.

Secularism should not become a kind of "national civil religion".

There is a sort of confusion in the public debate about “what are we talking about”, “what level we are talking about”.

When there is confusion, this is precisely where those who have deadly intentions, who want to destabilize a regime or who have intentions to take power, find a completely favorable ground for instrumentalizing and manipulating people.

So let's not confuse all these notions which are in a way fundamental notions for us and which are also fundamental for many countries.

Freedom of expression, freedom of the press are part of human rights that cannot be violated in any country.

What one considers to be a true journalist or a quality press is the subject of debate and each culture, each cultural era, has the right to put its cursors wherever it wants.

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