Address by Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication, on the occasion of the presentation of the insignia of Commander of the Order of the Legion of Honour to Hervé Bourges

This monitoring mission, you have always kept in mind, even in
the highest positions in the French audiovisual industry.

The big boss of radio and television today embodies the cause
diversity of the media. Moreover, the Maghreb will benefit from
your first political and journalistic battles. By joining
the weekly Christian Witness, which clearly takes part in the
decolonization, and for which you are the editor-in-chief,
you sign your first articles on Algeria. During your service
military in Algeria you are in charge of the supervision of youth and
experience the colonial reality on the other side of the mirror. Back in
France, you join the cabinet of Edmond Michelet, Minister of
Justice of General de Gaulle: your mission is to maintain the link
with the historical leaders of the Algerian Revolution imprisoned. After
independence, Ahmed Ben Bella calls you to his side, at the highest
level of the apparatus of the young Algerian Republic where you will be
advisor to the President, advisor to the Minister of Youth, then
Director of Youth and Popular Education at Abdelaziz
Bouteflika and collaborator of the Minister of Communication Bachir
Boumaza. It is the first generation of Algerian journalists
you contribute to training.

Training in information professions is one of the main lines of your
commitments. I am thinking of the courses you teach as
Conference at the University Paris II, at the Department of Information Studies
in the Third World countries of which you are the director at the Institute
the creation in 1970 of the Ecole Supérieure
Yaoundé International Journalism Association in Cameroon that you lead
for 6 years, or at the École supérieure de journalisme de Lille, where
you had been a student, and you were the director from 1976 to 1980.

These multiple training and structuring commitments
of the information field in developing countries bring you
to the office of Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, General Manager of
UNESCO, of which you are the spokesman, before becoming in 1980 the
Director of the Public Information Office of the prestigious
international organization, with which you will be more
later, in 1994 and 1995, the Permanent Delegate of France.

Building on this experience, you return to more national horizons, and
start your remarkable journey among media leaders
French. You enter Radio France Internationale as
General Manager, then lead TF1 until the privatization of the
channel in 1987. After having been at the origin of the creation of Canal+
Horizons, after also being head of Radio Monte Carlo, you
the public service, taking first the general direction of the
Antenna 2 and FR3, before assuming the presidency of the
group France Télévisions.

Suffice to say that you have been of all revolutions in the panorama
French audiovisual, both public and private, which earned you in 1995
to be appointed by the President of the Republic member of the Council
Superior of the Audiovisual, whose presidency you hold until
2001.

France Télévisions and the entire French audiovisual landscape must
be the television of all French people. Both in terms of content,
programs, visibility, teams and internal management of
the company, diversity is now a priority requirement of the group
France Télévisions, which has set itself the objective of being exemplary in
this domain, in order to best reflect a plural France.

The two reports you submitted on behalf of the Standing Committee on
diversity is an indispensable barometer for a difficult task.
By taking stock and proposing new ambitions,
these uncompromising reports point to delays and promote the taking of
without which diversity and equal opportunities, that France
Televisions must promote and enhance, would remain a dead letter.

With the reports of Club Averroès, the Commission Media and
Diversities”, the HALDE report, the APF’s own work, the
Reports of the Committee on Diversity of France Télévisions
make a major contribution to this revolution in perceptions and
commitments of media leaders in this area. I
to recall that the Contract of Objectives and Means that we
signed with the President of France Télévisions Rémy Pflimlin takes
for the first time, the representation of diversity in the
objectives set for all France Télévisions' antennas, with the
presence of a social mediator within the group, the establishment of a
a directory of specialists and actors from diversity, or
still provisions concerning the castings of animators and
journalists. We know all that these initiatives owe to your
impulse and your recommendations, and you are the first to us
that the road will still be long, to ensure that these
issues are naturally integrated into the functioning of our
chains.

Because in your job as a journalist and a leader, you have
always defended republican values with conviction and demand,
because you are the best lawyer of an exemplary public service
Hervé Bourges, on behalf of the President of the
Republic, and by virtue of the powers vested in us, we you
let’s make Commander of the Legion of Honor.