the heart in addition to rigor

Independent journalist Marine Vlahovic died at the age of 39, in Marseille. His sound documentaries, particularly on the West Bank, shone with their humanity.

Ne know Marine Vlahovic for her sound documentaries, jewels of journalism which shone a little more than the others thanks to the pure, obvious authenticity of their author. The lifeless body of the 39-year-old independent reporter was found on the roof terrace of her Marseille home on the morning of Monday, November 25. An autopsy ordered by the Marseille prosecutor's office will determine the circumstances of his death.

After having extensively investigated the death of environmental activist Rémi Fraisse (killed by an offensive grenade thrown by a gendarme during a demonstration against the Sivens dam), Marine Vlahovic became a correspondent in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Between 2016 and 2019, she covered Middle Eastern news for French-speaking public radio. An experience that she recounts frankly, with hindsight and a critical eye, in her very good series of podcasts Penpal notebooks produced by Arte Radio, and crowned by the Scam 2021 prize for best documentary.

Microphone handed to Gazan colleagues

In the latest episode titled Gaza Calling, posted online this year, she recounts her desperate attempts to reach the Gaza Strip, where her journalist friends and their families risk death under Israeli fire. Stranded in Cairo for many weeks, she always kept in touch with them, sending them words of comfort and packages of professional equipment or medicine. These thousands of messages, these hundreds of hours of calls put on air had given rare visibility to the work of his Gazan colleagues. “Making a podcast about people who could die at any moment is very hard,” she told us. Recently, she had gone out of her way to help one of them and his wife see a more secure future.

We lose, journalism loses, the world loses an extremely brilliant and sincere person.

Benoît Bouscarel, former journalist for France Culture

In a text published Wednesday November 27, the Arte Radio team remembers “his enthusiasm and generosity” et “his big gravelly laugh”. Some people sometimes nicknamed her “Marine the machine”, in tribute to her hard work, but Marine Vlahovic was anything but a machine. In Gaza Calling, she knew how, masterfully, to interweave professionalism and friendship, offering on the microphone the tremors of her voice, the heart in addition to rigor, this extra soul that did not always allow her the imperatives of the radio newspapers that she fed when she was a correspondent. Benoît Bouscarel, who then commissioned reports for France Culture as editor-in-chief of the station's weekends, remains marked by the sincerity and sensitivity of his colleague. “She was pure journalism, pure human too. We lose, journalism loses, the world loses an extremely brilliant and sincere person. » This week, he played Clermont-Ferrand students as he introduced him to the basics of information Gaza Calling – “a demonstration of everything I explain to them about the importance of field journalism”.

For the first time in fifteen years in the profession, disgusted in particular by the French media treatment of Gaza, Marine Vlahovic had not requested the renewal of her press card. But she hadn't stopped“listen to the world”, as she said. “Between two cigarettes, two laughs, two outbursts, she had a very clear vision of journalism, on which she looked critically but kindly, underlines Benoît Bouscarel, who has continued to work with her in recent years. For her, it was a human profession, not a technical profession. » Every second of his documentaries proves it.