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THE HUMBLE HEROES
BERNARD WERBER WRITER
The time when I was
in great difficulty,
and someone reached out to me
was in 1990.
At the time I was a journalist At the Nouvel Observateur,
and I applied for a prize,
the Mumm for best reporting.
I had applied the way
you would buy a lottery ticket,
because I was a freelancer
and I wanted to be a staff journalist.
So I hoped that...
if I won the prize, I could do that.
So I competed for the prize.
To everyone's amazement, especially the people in my department,
I was selected, and not
the 50 other journalists from the Nouvel Obs' who had competed.
So my Chief, my department head, came to see me
and said : “This is embarrassing,
“I don't think you realize what you've done,
“but you were chosen,
“which means that you, an outside journalist,
“were better than all of us.
“The team can't handle this.
“I don't think you realize the mistake you made,
“by daring to compete for this prize.”
And I met Françoise Giroud
who said to me :
“Listen, your report is extraordinary.
“I didn't even know you were with the magazine.
“You're a scientific journalist. This is really fabulous.”
And I told her that I was hoping to become a staff journalist. 35: 00:01:41.11 00:01:43.13 And she said : “No problem,
“I'll take care of it.”
So she had me meet Perdriel,
who initiated the process.
In the meantime, however,
all of those who hadn't won ganged together
in a sort of a strange plot, basically saying :
“This young guy
who is sawing off the branch we're sitting on has got to go!
In other words they all got together to get me kicked out of the magazine,
particularly Josette Alia who considered that she deserved the
prize and couldn't understand how I could have won it.
So a firing procedure was initiated
at the same time as the hiring procedure.
So I said : “I'm sick and tired of all this,
“whichever procedure
“gives results first,
“that'll be the final decision.”
So both procedures went into operations.
And of course as always, the bad guys win.
The firing procedure was faster
than the hiring procedure.
So I said : "Alea jacta est, it doesn't matter.
I have no time to waste with a paper that doesn't want me
and prefers to focus on seniority stuff,
And I just said :
“Pay me what you owe me, and good bye.”
I was being all proud and dignified.
Then I saw that all my colleagues ditched me,
that was already obvious,
so did my department head,
and everybody, basically, as usual in this type of situation.
And then suddenly, this one guy appeared, François Schlosser.
He was the head of the international section,
all the reporting abroad.
He was a very austere type, didn't talk much,
looked sort of like an old clergyman,
sort of a tough and closed personality,
He came to see me and said :
“I heard about your story, I can't let that happen.
“You're being fired for having shown that you're really good
“and you're not even fighting.
“So since you're not fighting back, “I'm going to do it for you.
So he went upstairs
and he said to them : “You're firing a guy because he is good,
“and you're going to keep all the losers who didn't win
“AND they're going to get raises!”
He fought this all alone, I didn't even help him.
I was completely :
“They don't want me,
“I don't have any time to waste.”
He succeeded.
First of all he saw that I hadn't been paid
all sort of things, benefits and such.
So he succeeded in getting me this compensation.
I went to see him and said : “Why are you doing this,
“What is the point? I mean, I'm already out.
“You have nothing to gain from protecting or saving me.”
He said : “These are my principles.
“I don't like nasty things happening in this newsmagazine,
“and no-one reacting. I knew the others were all cowards,
somebody had to do it, so I did.”
And I noticed at the time that he was
wearing something around his neck,
Later on we saw each other, we became friends
thanks to this business.
And he said : “This is part of my education
“as a human being, you can't let an injustice just happen,
“you have to do everything in your power
“to mitigate the bad things that you cannot entirely prevent.”
So I realized that out of 120 journalists
who preach night and day about how they are protecting the poor people,
and fighting for the truth,
Only one was really a good guy, and that was François Schlosser,
who was in charge of the International Section.
Sous-titrage : Eclair Group