- Radio France launched an internal investigation in March to analyse, inter alia, the cases of harassment in the Baiona delegation reported by journalist Amaia Cazenave. At the moment, there are eleven people under suspicion: At Baiona headquarters, six workers have been evicted from their jobs. Cazenave and other sports journalists were responsible for denouncing in a documentary the cases of violence that occurred at work.
The writer and journalist Marie Portolano and the editor-in-chief of the media, Guillaume Priou Brut FR, released last March the documentary Je ne suis pas une salope, je suis une journaliste (I am not a urdanga, I am a journalist). Several women engaged in sports journalism denounced the cases of male violence in which they have worked.
Following the publication of the document, several French media have opened internal proceedings to analyse what has already happened. The Radio France chain also investigates the case of Amaia Cazenave, a worker of the public radio France Bleu and who has recently been arrested. Cazenave, a sports journalist specializing in rugby, among others in the Baiona delegation, has since March denounced cases of gender-based violence suffered by fellow workers.
The director of Radio France, Sibyle Veil, launched an internal investigation on 23rd, which has dismissed five journalists and an animator from the Baiona broadcast. In other radio delegations in France, several journalists are also under investigation, with a total of eleven workers under suspicion.
Dismissal is an interim decision and, for the time being, no sanctions will be imposed on them. The five journalists will have to meet the management team of the Radio France headquarters in Paris from 29 September each year. In that case, they will decide what action to take. The chain’s director of information and sports, vincent Giret, said that “if the allegations are proven to be true, sanctions will be imposed and made public.”
Testimony of Cazenave
According to the media FranceInfo, in March the radio was informed of the cases of machismo suffered: “These actions were so great in my eyes that I took paper and started writing everything that was happening to me, with dates, details and phrases.” However, it denounced that the media did not intervene.
In the documentary, Cazenave reported several of these cases, which have been localized by the police. When he was alone with him, he said that a journalist screamed “I want to make leather” and that he found a comment out of place and sexist, but for some colleagues, that kind of conduct was normal. On many occasions, Cazenave was insulted by his clothing. In winter, a day when a leather pant had been put on, he had to suffer the humiliations of a colleague: “Tonight you’re going to ‘catch’,” one of the journalists said.