Editorial of the “World”. How are the French? In this pivotal period, at the end of a health crisis that has upset our existences, at the edge of a new presidential campaign, the major maturity of the life of the nation, we wanted to respond to this questioning by an unprecedented mobilization of Our writing.
Hundred journalists from the world, accompanied by hundred photographers, went on as many villages, neighborhoods, valleys, schools, factories, associations, cafes or hairdressing salons, for Giving the floor to our fellow citizens, tell their doubts, their dreams, their fears, their oppositions, their solidarities.
This massive appeal to the reporting, one of the fundamental genres of the journalism that we defend, has appeared necessary to unlock the enclosure of the current period, and enlighten us collectively. After distancing, so long imposed by the pandemic, it allows direct exchange, up to women and men.
At obsessive reading grids of commentators and ideologues, who claim to organize the public debate around a single theme or cause, it opposes fragments that are so many nuances, deepening, sometimes contradictions, which make up the reality of our country.
The scenario of the civil war is false
What do we tell us these 100 “fragments of France”, to appear in the two weeks coming to our site, in our application “The morning of the world”, in our daily life and in “M”, our magazine? That if we want to move away from the television trays and chains of opinion, if one wants to leave the polls and social networks in their place, if one wants to open our eyes, the French society seems infinitely more complex, more composite, richer than the portrait that is usually drawn to us. Three main findings come out.
First this one: the scenario of the civil war is false. Like that of a collapse of the nation or a dislocation of the French society. Our country is not the caricature to make believe the prophets and hate entrepreneurs who profess their nostalgic, sometimes racist vision of society. France does not look like this cliché of a nation that would have been resumered to violence, fear and public debate should be limited to immigration, insecurity or identity issues.
The second observation that goes back from our reports is that the French society held then crossed, as the rest of the planet, a health, social, economic, completely unpublished crisis with the epidemic of COVID-19. Never, except in the periods that followed the wars, there had been such financial transfers, via the state budget, to make national solidarity live, particularly to remunerate those who could not work anymore.
we listen to each other
The third observation is that of decoupling between the current nature of the political debates and the expectations of society. To listen only those who make noise, in the street, on social networks, or on the television plateaus, to judge the state of the country through the only diverse facts, one is mistaken for sure of diagnosis . This does not mean that everything is fine, especially on the front of inequality, social and generational, nor that the reasons for collective concern are not real, especially in the climate and environmental areas.
In particular, it does not allow anything to avoid asking difficult questions, sometimes painful, on the distribution of wealth, on the educational model, on the health system, on the place of research, on policies in favor of the youth or on the future sharing of public debt. These long-term topics seem today serious and important to justify to exchange, to listen to each other, and to build its opinion – before deciding.
With these Fragments of France and other editorial operations to follow, for its coverage of the presidential campaign that opens Le Monde intends to fulfill its mission to its readers and readers, carrying these themes on the agenda of the collective discussion.