When girls go to the entrance… and inform it | EUROtoday

Shis voice is thought to all French viewers. A determine at France Télévisions, Maryse Burgot has been masking wars and worldwide conflicts for greater than thirty years, from Kosovo to Ukraine, from Syria to the Middle East. The daughter of Breton farmers, the good reporter was not destined to pursue such a profession, as she recounts in her Memoirs, printed in mid-October (Far from dwellingFayard).

In addition to his authentic background, his voice, which has since turn into his signature, was not “wired for television”: “too high-pitched, too high-pitched, not assertive enough”, his professors on the journalism college criticized him, who counsel that audiovisual isn’t for her and encourage her to show to the written press. By problem, Maryse Burgot selected tv. His voice will solely be one impediment amongst many others to beat so as to make a dwelling from his ardour. Her fashion, her approach of being a journalist and telling the world, she is going to impose on the display screen and never in writing.

ALSO READ Kate Winslet: ‘Lee Miller took 9 years of my life’ In current months, the cabinets of our bookstores have welcomed the life tales of journalists well-known to most people. In A lady on the entrance (Le Cherche-Midi), Martine Laroche-Joubert appears to be like again on the missions that made her a lady within the subject, from her first stories with the Pygmies of the Central African Republic to the Arab Spring, from the Gulf Wars to the autumn of the Berlin Wall .

In Mom goes to battle (Éditions du Rocher, 2024), Dorothée Olliéric testifies to her visceral want to enter delicate territory and the typically troublesome returns to her kids. In My wars (L’Observatoire, 2024), Marine Jacquemin appears to be like again on the conflicts she coated and the intimate wars she needed to wage to carve out a spot for herself in an basically male setting.

Encourage vocations

“Why write? So many books on the lives of war reporters in bookstore windows…” she asks within the introduction, this kind of work, which abounds, really tends to kind a style in itself. “Nothing predicted this book, and for a long time I saw little reason to write it,” Martine Laroche-Joubert appears to reply in response. And then it appeared to me that it could be time to attempt to present why I imagine this career is so essential. »

Martine Laroche-Joubert’s Memoirs appeared in May 2019, earlier than the outbreak of the battle in Ukraine, earlier than the beginning of the battle between Israel and Hamas. In 2023, at the very least 38 journalists and media professionals have been killed in battle zones, in comparison with 28 in 2022 and 20 in 2021. If the entire works cited recount extraordinary journeys and keenness for the career, they recall earlier than absolutely the necessity of being involved with the sector to tell. And to encourage vocations. Openly addressed to “our youth, victims, sometimes, of the broken social elevator”, Maryse Burgot’s recollections present that we are able to develop up in a rural setting whereas daring to dream of becoming a member of a Parisian editorial workforce.

ALSO READ Has Kate Winslet turn into Lee Miller? Its historical past appears to have solely been written for round twenty years, however girls’s reporting really took its first steps within the mid-Nineteenth century.^e century, because the historian Christian Delporte remembers in Women reporters. The historical past of nice reporting by the pioneers of the style (Armand Colin, 2024).

In 1847, Jane Cazneau, witness to the seize of Veracruz, signed correspondence (admittedly overtly campaigning for the extension of the United States in the direction of the South) within the American press, and coated the conquest of Mexico. At this time, battle reporting was not but a career and “always depends on chance and circumstances”, earlier than constituting a self-discipline in its personal proper.

“Are you a war correspondent or a woman in my bed?” »

Albert Londres, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Kessel and Robert Capa quickly embodied the heroic figures, in whose shadow feminine feathers tried to impose themselves. “If there is a war somewhere, I want to be there,” Martha Gellhorn wrote to buddies. She would be the solely lady to take part within the Normandy landings and can set foot on Omaha Beach earlier than her husband on the time, Ernest Hemingway, stranded offshore with troopers. Initially disinterested within the European state of affairs, Hemingway tried to dissuade his spouse from becoming a member of the Old Continent. “Are you a war correspondent or a woman in my bed?” » he asks him in a letter. “However, it is indeed Hemingway’s paper that the Collier’s place on the front page, on July 22, with a photo where we see him surrounded by soldiers, recalls Christian Delporte. Gellhorn, for her part, is only entitled to a small article on page sixteen and her odyssey on the Normandy beaches does not appear until August 5. » The couple separated in October 1945, their divorce pronounced at the expense of Martha Gellhorn, accused of having “voluntarily abandoned” the marital dwelling.

In honor of the Ellen Kuras biopic directed by Kate Winslet, at the moment in theaters, Lee Miller follows the advance of Allied troops in the direction of the East in 1944. Above all identified for her images documenting the horrors of battle (together with these taken within the Buchenwald and Dachau focus camps in April 1945, which Vogue will initially hesitate to publish earlier than devoting seven pages to them underneath the title “ BELIEVE IT “), his articles “are worthy of inclusion in an anthology of war stories », affirms Edmonde Charles-Roux in her preface to the collection of war reports by the American reporter (Bartillat, 2024).

In February 1945, Edmonde Charles-Roux, then a social worker in an armored division, was tasked with escorting Lee Miller into the field. “She had a well-tailored uniform and she was a reporter at Voguea magazine which one hardly expected to publish articles devoted to military operations, nor, moreover, one expected to see wandering in the flesh, on the front of ‘Alsace, the blonde Venus of the surrealists whose appearance in The Blood of a Poet was still in everyone’s memory. […] Now – that was my mistake – this woman no longer existed. »

ALSO READ The ideological behind the scenes of the landing in NormandyFrom a field hospital behind Omaha Beach to Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in the Bavarian mountains, Lee Miller watches the retreat of Nazi troops in Alsace, fraternizes with Red Army soldiers in Torgau and takes a bath in Hitler’s bathtub in Munich – a moment immortalized by photographer and journalist David E. Scherman in a famous photo.

In her article on the siege of Saint-Malo, in which she participated, she mixes extracts from a tourist guide with powerful images testifying to the destruction of this “Breton Tyre”. “There was no one at Place Chateaubriand, apart from a sentry. I saw boots, remnants of ammunition, barbed wire peppered with traps where the cafe tables of the Chateaubriand hotel, now charred, were usually located; it stank of corpses, the dust was swirling. The Hotel de l’Univers was almost intact. The 389^e unit would come and enjoy their sheets and their wine. The streets were black with rubble […]. Tall, solitary chimneys let out smoke from the rubble at their base. Distressed cats were roaming around. A bloated horse had failed to provide adequate shelter for the dead American soldier behind him; flowerpots adorned wallless windows. »

Drawing the outlines of a profession

Nellie Bly, Ida Minerva Tarbell, Peggy Hull, Dorothy Thompson, Martha Gellhorn, Janet Flanner, Oriana Fallaci, Françoise Demulder, Marie Colvin have all contributed to shaping the contours of a profession that was not – and still is not – for them. destined. To access conflict zones, many first became involved as nurses, for the Red Cross, and in humanitarian work. Their approach to the field complements that of male reporters: when the latter emphasize geopolitics and armaments, the human component is often at the heart of the reports signed by female writers.

According to the main stakeholders, being a woman can even be an advantage in obtaining information, because they have easier access to female populations and appear to be less threatening than their male colleagues. “A woman, especially a Western one, does not count: we are not suspicious of her, we consider her harmless, we let her pass through checkpoints, we even accept interviews,” signifies Christian Delporte in his ebook. Women reporters can go the place their colleagues can not: to satisfy girls and their households. […] Not solely can a reporter strategy girls however, having gained confidence, they comply with speak in confidence to her, as Anne-Claire Coudray factors out: “Being a woman has often opened doors for me. When you are about to interview a young Yazidi who was a sex slave of Daesh, she probably has less difficulty talking about what she experienced with a woman.” »

Victims, of their career, of prejudices linked to their gender, girls reporters are all of the extra inclined, of their writings, to know and spotlight the injustices suffered by the ladies they meet on the opposite facet of the world. , in societies the place their rights are violated or non-existent. In 2021, Maryse Burgot goes to Afghanistan after the return of the Taliban to energy, whereas “a dark night will gradually settle over the lives of Afghans and more particularly that of Afghan women”.

In Far from dwellingshe stories her assembly with activists in a restaurant in Kabul who, regardless of the dangers, proceed to exhibit and struggle for his or her rights. Among them, a college professor refusing to permit the era of younger women attending her lessons to be “ sacrificed on the altar of Islamic law. “When I leave my house to demonstrate,” this professor tells him, “I don’t know if I’m going to return again alive, but when I die, I’ll have defended my sisters. Now that is my mission. » A tear falls on her cheeks. I can think about my face if I used to be banned from working! writes Maryse Burgot. Would I’ve the braveness of those girls? Would I be on the facet of those that resist? »

Far from dwelling, by Maryse Burgot, Fayard, 342 pages, 20.90 euros.

A lady on the entranceby Martine Laroche-Joubert, Le Cherche-Midi, 208 pages, 17 euros.

Mom goes to battleby Dorothée Olliéric, Éditions du Rocher, 304 pages, 19.90 euros.

My warsby Marine Jacquemin, L’Observatoire, 336 pages, 23 euros.

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Kangaroo of the day

Answer

War stories 1944-1945by Lee Miller, Bartillat, 224 pages, 25 euros.

Women reporters, The historical past of nice reporting by the pioneers of the styleby Christian Delporte, Armand Colin, 416 pages, 22.90 euros.