To answer listeners’ questions, Florent Guyotat, editor-in-chief of Franceinfo, is on the microphone of Emmanuelle Daviet
Emmanuelle Davis : A listener writes: “It is surprising to note the lack of information on the situation in Mayotte on FranceInfo, even though alarming images and comments appear on various television channels. This silence is so deafening on your part that one would think of a deliberate censorship”.
Does this comment seem justified to you?
Florent Guyotat: No, it’s not justified. There was no censorship and above all this information was very present on the air from the very beginning. As soon as we learned that riots were breaking out on the spot, as soon as we also learned that the RAID had been sent as reinforcements to the spot, we seized on this information and, of course, dealt with it. I’ll give you an example. From November 21st at 7.10 pm, in Nicolas Terre’s 17/20, in the early evening from home, we had the very strong testimony of the deputy of the first district of Mayotte, Estelle Youssouffa, who told us about the location on the spot. I’ll quote you a passage, she tells us “We feel abandoned by the authorities because Mayotte has been asking for help for years. Are we French like the others? Whole families are leaving the island, investors and officials. » This is what it tells us. So you see we’ve been very present on this information from the beginning. And a few hours later, on November 23, this time at 7:10 in the morning, this time the mayor of Mamoudzou heard what he told us at that time.
The mayor of Mamoudzou: They are terrorists, they attack honest people and they attack the population, they attack the Republic. Because when you burn down a town hall, when you burn down an intercommunity, it means that it is the people who are there to destabilize Mayotte. They are organised, they don’t move at random. When you’re 30, 50 you plan your attacks. When you kill a young man and follow his course, you tear him apart, deposit him in front of the road, you make a trophy out of him. It can’t be urban violence.
Florent Guyotat: Here is an excerpt from the interview with the mayor of Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila. So that, you tell me, is the word of elected officials. But you know that on Franceinfo we also have the desire not to hear only the institutional voice. We also want to go see the locals and that’s what happened with sending a reporter. So it was France Inter’s Mathilde Dehimi who went there. And she didn’t just give a voice to the elect. We’ve also heard from locals. This is very important to us, especially to this resident of a slum in Mayotte:
They set fire to the houses, and beat people up. We cannot sit there and watch or wait for the police.
So it was November 26, and of course we continue to follow what is happening on the spot, even if for the moment the situation has calmed down a bit.
Emmanuelle Davis : the situation has calmed down a bit, of course, but how do you follow these events in practice?
Florent Guyotat: We are following the dispatches from the agencies and you know that at the end of the year Gérald Damarnin is announced as Minister of the Interior. We will of course see how this visit goes with our correspondents on site. Of course, if the situation calls for it, we also plan to send a reporter to the site depending on what happens.
Emmanuelle Davis : Listener writes: “The other DOM-TOMs are relatively little considered in your editorial concerns. »
What place does the DOM TOM treatment occupy on your antenna?
Florent Guyotat: they occupy an important place. I’ll give you another example: it’s the chlordecone scandal, you know, this pesticide. We learned a week ago that this matter was the subject of a dismissal, which obviously aroused strong emotion in the population on the spot in the Antilles. And we echoed him there too, in particular by interviewing Harry Durimel who is the environmentalist mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre, so we were also present on this information there. And let’s not forget that there is a fixed appointment dedicated to Overseas on our antenna, it is the overseas newspaperwhich I remember for the uninitiated, every Sunday at 3.20pm, 5.20pm, obviously if you can’t listen at that time, which is understandable if you have jet lag problems, you can find this chronicle at any time on franceinfo.fr as well as the reports by Mathilde Dehimi in Mayotte that we were talking about earlier.
