Tribune. You are interested in the world of culture, and you read, hear everywhere: the Racine report published on January 22, 2020 is buried and with it the hopes of an entire corporation! The rumor is spreading on social networks and the media is picking up on it as a proven truth. But who is spreading this rumor? Who speaks for us, more than 190,000 of us in extremely diverse professions, even though we are all authors?
The Racine report, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, pointed out our precariousness. It was rich in 23 recommendations to remedy it. We want to say this: this report was an important stage and we have all welcomed the interest of its publication and the interesting aspects of its content, but some of its recommendations are far from unanimous among the authors that we represent.
We therefore deeply regret that only the words of organizations calling for the strict application of this report are relayed in the media.
In other words: no, not everything is good to take in the Racine report and no, it is not admissible that some speak on behalf of others on subjects as important as professional elections, the statute of the author, representativeness or commissioning contract.
Why are we mobilizing?
We are all strong defenders of freedom of speech and opinion. But each, or each organization, must have the honesty to speak for itself, to respect diversity and to accept contradiction.
Because some – who therefore claim to speak in the name of all the authors – make the full application of the Racine report without consultation, and in particular the holding of professional elections, a prerequisite. This has the consequence of blocking any progress. Gathering the floor in consultation meetings at the Ministry of Culture or elsewhere, they present themselves as the only legitimate ones, and therefore audible in the media which they seem to conceive as the place of representativeness.
The authors’ defense cannot be frozen either by a thought that proclaims itself unanimous or by the electoralist-media obsession of a few. “If we organize elections, these parasites disappear”, writes a founder of the League of Professional Authors (LAP) in a public discussion thread.
And this is just one example among the many attacks, insults, untruths circulating in social networks against those who have the misfortune of not following their ideological line. Would the proposed elections thus have as their motivation the elimination of adversaries rather than the interest of the authors?
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