“Emotional assault”! “Brutalized”! “An outrage”! But what happened in Dany Laferrière’s life on April 14 of this year?
When I read these words which alluded to acts of violence, I believed that our favorite writer, member of the French Academy, had been hit or spat in the face in a dark alley in the metropolis.
But in fact, he was simply… interviewed on Radio-Canada… on a subject he did not want to discuss.
Sorry to say it like that, but I didn’t know that Monsieur Laferrière was so fragile.
How to do an interview at Radio-Canada without getting tired
Camille Robitaille, the literary agent of the writer Dany Laferrière, filed a complaint with Radio-Canada because, during the Paris Book Fair, an RDI journalist interviewed the writer and asked him to comment on the situation in Haiti. The problem was that the agent had agreed with the show’s researcher beforehand and that they had agreed that Laferrière only wanted to talk about literature.
Personally, I always have a problem when guests tell me that they do not want to discuss this or that subject, but when we agree on forbidden subjects, this agreement must be respected. In this case, the (rather crucial) information was not transmitted to the host who asked the questions.
- Listen to Rémi Villemure’s commentary on Sophie Durocher’s microphone via QUB :
I understand that Dany Laferrière did not want to talk about Haiti, at least not in 60 seconds and moreover in the context of an interview where he wanted to talk about books.
But the language used by his agent to describe what happened to him is completely exaggerated. She denounces “violence committed against” her client.
“He was brutalized. He was so taken aback by the question that he had to remove his headphones in order to stop the emotional assault,” she wrote. “Violence will always trump culture. (…) We believe that the news room, accustomed to communicating in a clear and direct manner, treated our initial request with casualness and a lack of respect.
Photo provided by Jean-François Paga
And she speaks frankly of “the outrage suffered by Mr. Laferrière, on the airwaves of RDI”.
Um… let’s calm down! Mr. Laferrière is a great writer, we agree on that. But I don’t know in what universe asking unsolicited questions of a guest is considered brutality and emotional assault. Are we going to have to issue “trauma warnings” to our guests before speaking to them now?
The ombudsman speaks out
The reason why we know all this is that the Radio-Canada ombudsman, who received Ms. Robitaille’s complaint, has just made a decision. “The interview with the writer Dany Laferrière, broadcast on April 14, 2024 on the show First the weekend infoon ICI RDI, violated Radio-Canada’s journalistic standards and practices in terms of fairness and the conduct and use of the interview.
Yes, it’s not good to ask a guest a question on a subject that they had clearly indicated they wanted to avoid.
But that is no reason to speak of violence, or outrage, or brutality.
If there is anyone who knows the importance of using the right word, it is an illustrious member of the French Academy, right?
