Dossier

Se connecter aux déconnectés | Benoît CHAUMONT | TEDxÉcoleCentraleLyon

Journalist Benoît Chaumont argues that genuine connection, rooted in empathy, is the core function of journalism. He demonstrates this by recounting experiences traveling to disconnected communities, such as North Korea and Mennonites in Bolivia, where isolation prevents contact with the outside world. The most profound connection, he suggests, is achieved through experiencing others' lives, allowing the journalist to understand their internal realities.

## Speakers & Context
- **Benoît Chaumont**: Journalist, 40 years old, 18 years in the profession.
- **Event Theme**: Connections, specifically interpersonal, human connections in general.
- **Initial Hesitation**: Expected to speak about travel/signal issues but realized the theme was broader, covering general human connections.
- **Previous Reference**: Mentioned a journalist named Rémy Kolpa Kopoul, who described himself as a "collector."

## Theses & Positions
- The primary job of a journalist is to connect the audience/general public with people, sources, and information via the media.
- Empathy should be the primary quality for a journalist.
- Many isolated groups, despite rejecting modernity, are fundamentally driven by an internal "need to escape their minds."
- Most self-sufficient communities are highly connected to nature, resulting in practices like zero greenhouse gas emissions and organic food consumption.

## Concepts & Definitions
- **Dictatorship Tour**: A series of reports conducted by Chaumont to tour the most closed-off, disconnected countries in the world (about a dozen).
- **Private Chef**: A fabricated profession used to gain entry to closed-off countries for investigative work.
- **The System**: The subject of a series of reports for Canal+, involving immersions in communities living on the margins of modern society.
- **Balman**: The language spoken by the Mennonites, which no longer exists.

## Mechanisms & Processes
- **Gaining Credibility (North Korea)**: Lying to a travel agency, posing as a private chef, and creating a fake, optimized website to gain entry to restricted areas.
- **Observing Forbidden Topics (North Korea)**: Understanding the power of the dictatorship when a guide restrains a tourist from asking questions about the outside world (specifically mentioning Obama).
- **Language Stagnation**: Observing that Mennonite language skills have become stagnant due to isolation.
- **Community Control (Mennonites)**: Maintaining self-containment using technology (tractors with steel blades) that physically restricts movement outside the settlement and limits the road network.
- **Escape Mechanisms**: Documenting varied methods for internal mental escape across cultures:
    - **Mennonites (Bolivia)**: Alcohol consumption, rebellion (Jacob).
    - **Mount Athos Monks**: Prayer, taking it five times a day.
    - **Rastafarians (Jamaica)**: Connecting with "Jo, their god, the Almighty."
    - **Slab City (US)**: Combination of alcohol, drugs, and prayer (mass every Sunday).

## Timeline & Sequence
- **Career Span**: 18 years in journalism.
- **Dictatorship Tour Scope**: Approximately a dozen closed-off countries visited.
- **Investigative Scope (Canal+ Reports)**: Included the Mennonites, Bolivian communities, Mount Athos, Jamaica, and Slab City.
- **Chaumont's Travel Frequency**: Has been to about twenty countries for the "GP2 series" and possibly fifty destinations in his entire career.

## Named Entities
- **Rémy Kolpa Kopoul**: A journalist who described himself as a "collector."
- **North Korea**: A country featured in the Dictatorship Tour, requiring deceptive means to report on.
- **Canal+**: The broadcaster for the "\[ \_\_ \] the System" series.
- **Mennonites**: A group described as a "more hardcore version" of the Amish, living in isolation and rejecting modernity.
- **Bolivian inhabitants (Mennonite context)**: The people whose language skills were examined during translation attempts.
- **Goethe Institute**: Called by Chaumont to find a translator for the Mennonites.
- **Mt. Athos**: A peninsula containing nearly a thousand secluded Orthodox monks.
- **Jamaica**: Location where Chaumont observed the Rastafarians.
- **Slab City**: A community in the Californian desert, described as the "lost souls of America."

## Numbers & Data
- **Age/Experience**: Benoît Chaumont is **40 years old** and has **18 years** of experience.
- **Tours**: The Dictatorship Tour covered **about a dozen** countries.
- **Mennonite language knowledge**: The translator, his nephew, **didn't understand anything** about the Mennonites.
- **Mount Athos monks**: Nearly **a thousand** Orthodox monks are secluded there.
- **Monks' prayer frequency**: They take it **five times a day**.
- **Slab City activities**: Includes Sunday mass, alongside alcohol and joints.
- **Nature Connection**: Most self-sufficient communities are **super eco-friendly**.

## Examples & Cases
- **North Korean Connection Barrier**: Unable to film everything due to supervision by guides, highlighting that foreign interaction is limited to controlled settings.
- **The Fake Website**: Creating a "private chef website" and paying for optimization so it would appear first on Google when searching for Benoît Chaumont.
- **Mennonite Isolation Markers**: Using tractors with steel blades to prevent escape, and limiting the tractor's path only to small roads.
- **Mennonite Children's Behavior**: Not smiling because toys are forbidden; fun is considered a sin, except at "Jacob's."
- **Jacob's House**: Showed photo collections of carriage accidents, road accidents, and sometimes "little Mennonites who are born deformed because since they live in isolation there is no mixing and they very often marry their cousins."
- **Contrast in Escape**: Comparing the Methnocite use of alcohol (Jacob) to the monks' prayer or the Rastafarians' connection to "Jo."

## Tools, Tech & Products
- **Google**: Used by Chaumont to verify his online presence, initially yielding the "dictatorship tour" link.
- **Travel Agency Website**: The platform where Chaumont successfully disguised his identity.
- **Camera/Photography**: Used by the speaker for documenting scenes and by the Mennonite children for discovery.
- **Tractors**: Used in the Mennonite settlement, featuring steel blades to restrict movement.

## References Cited
- **Amish**: Used for comparison to the Mennonites.
- **Little House on the Prairie**: Used as a cultural reference point for understanding the Mennonites.
- **Deliverance**: Used as a comparative cultural reference point.
- **Canal+**: The broadcaster commissioning the "\[ \_\_ \] the System" reports.
- **Goethe Institute**: Called by Chaumont to assist with translation services.

## Trade-offs & Alternatives
- **Method of Access**: Trading authentic journalistic credentials for a "tourist" façade (i.e., feigning being a private chef).
- **Isolation vs. Progress**: The inherent trade-off in closed communities is maintaining cultural purity (rejecting modernity) versus accepting outside influence (which risks dissolution of culture).
- **Escape vs. Reality**: The various coping mechanisms (alcohol, prayer, drugs) serve as alternatives to confronting the systemic restrictions of their environments.

## Counterarguments & Caveats
- The inherent difficulty in fully documenting human connection because physical access is often restricted or requires deception.
- The speaker admits that documenting the connections is inherently incomplete (e.g., "we couldn't film everything").
- The physical limitations of self-sufficient communities (e.g., the tractor's inability to leave the settlement).

## Methodology
- **Journalistic Immersion**: Physically embedding in communities to observe life on the margins of modern society.
- **Deception/Obfuscation**: Utilizing fake online identities and travel documentation to bypass regime restrictions.
- **Translation and Linguistic Study**: Employing institutes (Goethe) and familial knowledge to decode lost or stagnant languages (e.g., Balman).
- **Comparative Anthropology**: Analyzing divergent coping mechanisms (prayer, alcohol, technology, withdrawal) used by different isolated groups.

## Implications & Consequences
- **The Power of Empathy**: The ultimate takeaway is that empathy must be the primary, guiding quality of journalism.
- **The Nature of Connection**: Genuine connection requires crossing boundaries, which is what the best journalists must facilitate.
- **Global Connectivity**: Even the most isolated groups are dealing with forms of stasis or a "need to escape their minds."

## Open Questions
- What are the ethical lines regarding the use of deception to fulfill journalistic mandates?
- How can global understanding be achieved without sacrificing the cultural integrity of isolated communities?

## Verbatim Moments
- *"My job as a journalist is to connect the audience, the general public, through the media, with the people we meet, with our sources, and with the information."*
- *"I had to lie and tell them I was a private chef."*
- *"The first question they ask is whether you're a journalist or a photojournalist."*
- *"I've been doing dictatorship tours for a while, and so when you typed my name into Google, you immediately came across the same thing: 'dictatorship tour.'"*
- *"one of them, curiously, asked us questions about Obama."*
- *"They're like Little House on the Prairie mixed with Deliverance."*
- *"I'm submitting this to you: these are Mennonites, Bolivian inhabitants, and they've stayed so much among themselves that their language has become stagnant."*
- *"fun is actually a sin, so you can't have fun there, except at Jacob's."*
- *"I don't like to travel to places, to countries where things are bad, where people are suffering."*
- *"I think above all that empathy should be the primary quality for a journalist."*