A motion of no confidence against the information management of the network of local public radio stations France Bleu was adopted by 85%, with 46% participation, the journalists’ unions SNJ and SNJ-CGT, which organized it, announced on Monday. Submitted to the vote of journalists electronically since Monday, September 19, this motion of no confidence was adopted by 159 votes against 28. In total, 196 journalists from the 44 editorial offices of France Bleu took part in the ballot, out of just over 400.
Management “no longer has the support of the editorial teams”
“The management cannot remain deaf to this expression or try to minimize it” and “must understand that it no longer has the support of the editorial teams”, commented the SNJ and the SNJ-CGT in a joint press release. According to them, the participation of 46% is “in the average of professional elections at Radio France and those for the press card”.
For his part, the director of France Bleu, Jean-Emmanuel Casalta, underlined in an internal email that “two thirds” of the network’s journalists “did not adhere” to the motion. The management of France Bleu and that of the Radio France group give their “full and complete confidence in the director of information and his teams”, added Jean-Emmanuel Casalta.
Continuation and emphasis of “vigorous effort”
According to him, the director of information, Erik Kervellec, and his teams will “continue and accentuate the vigorous, determined and attentive effort that they have made for many months to respond (…) to the tensions that may arise bring to light between our legitimate editorial expectations and our organizational and resource constraints”.
To justify the organization of the vote of the motion of no confidence, the two unions pointed to “the editorial strategy of France Bleu”, which they considered imposed vertically from Paris without taking into account local specificities, and denounced “the brutality of the management of this information management”. The third journalists’ union, FO, was not associated with the organization of the motion of no confidence. In addition, the society of editors and editors of France Bleu had “vigorously denounced the motion”, deploring that it was organized “at a time when the director of information is on sick leave”.