The most spectacular road trips are often the most unexpected. The scene takes place in a setting now familiar to many regulars of the Thinkerview YouTube channel: three personalities, seated in front of a black background, lit by several lampposts, interrogation style. The interviewer, known as Sky, is invisible. Only his voice – often ironic, if not mocking – is perceptible. Opposite, one of his guests, the economist and research director at the CNRS, Gaël Giraud, takes his ease.
After twenty-three minutes of interview, between two familiar terms, the economist launches into a tunnel of increasingly wild explanations: “Macron’s arrival at Rothschild was a decisive issue for him, in the sense where he was taken under the thumb of David de Rothschild”, he begins. At his side, Raphaël Rossello, investment banker, and Gilles Raveaud, professor of economics at Saint-Denis University and journalist at Charlie Hebdo, listen, pay attention. David de Rothschild “has a great eschatological project [sic] which is the absolute privatization of the world and the mediocritization of the State in such a way that a trauma like the nationalizations [des banques] of 1981 is no longer possible”, assures Gaël Giraud. Rossello nods, Gilles Raveaud contorts, obviously a little embarrassed. The interviewer is invisible in reverse shot, but we can guess that he is half amused, half flabbergasted. “Wait , it’s an extrapolation, it’s written, it’s your point of view, what is it?” Gaël Giraud, sure of his facts, launches: “It’s my point of view on information that circulates in Paris. Emmanuel Macron, in a way, is David de Rothschild’s gun carrier. He’s a bit like the child soldiers in the Congo, that is to say the children who are capable of anything…” Off-screen, Sky counter-attacks: “Oh no, wait, we can’t do this parallel!” Gaël Giraud assures us that it is, and the sequence then focuses on the nationalization of EDF.
Spectacular skids
The assertion is all the more surprising since it is hard to imagine Gaël Giraud, an intellectual accustomed to TV sets, making it on a broadcast with a large audience. The same day, the economist was also the guest of the weekend morning of France Inter. He obviously did not make such remarks – unverifiable and not sourceable -, as he did not make them either on the set of Mediapart, on October 20, nor on that of the program C Policy, 16, on France 5. Difficult to allot this skid to the perils of the direct one. As demonstrated by the abundant promotion around his latest book, Giraud is neither an extreme personality nor a weirdo. He is a regular in the media: always very clear, a teacher, shrouded in his aura of a rigorous scientist. However, on the set of Thinkerview, his usual precautions seem to have flown away. Giraud, obviously confident, almost seems to forget that he is being filmed, yet reaching a very large audience. As of this writing, over 1.4 million people have viewed the video.
This phenomenon is not exclusive to someone who is also a Jesuit priest. Thinkerview receives various speakers, comedians – Jérémy Ferrari for example – to journalists – Natacha Polony, Elise Lucet – through politicians – François Ruffin, Yves Jégo. Many of these interviews are of good quality, demanding, the hours of discussion allowing the interviewee to develop his point. But like Gaël Giraud, the skids are often spectacular.
Millions of cumulative views
In another video, this time broadcast at the beginning of the year, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, then presidential candidate, also uttered a few unfortunate sentences. Returning to confinement, the leader of La France insoumise developed: “The FFP2, get out, come in, sign me a paper to force you out. Everyone has accepted this huge training exercise. A short sentence, far from the provocations of Emmanuel Todd, for example. Guest of the show in 2018, the anthropologist believed, from the first minutes, that Emmanuel Macron was not “really in power in France”.
“In contrast to TPMPThinkerview audiences are more likely to buy featured books”
Alain Juillet also lent himself to the exercise… and to slippages. In an interview broadcast in September 2021, the former head of intelligence at the DGSE, assures that the Arab springs were “manipulated from start to finish, with many failures”. Later in the interview, he also regrets that France’s drug enforcement policy is not as tough as Beijing’s. “I’m not a crazy lover of the Chinese system, but in China, anyone who touches drugs goes there regardless of their level. I guarantee you that it calms down!” he believes, continuing: “So yes, we will tell you, but how! And human life! Me, personally, I think that there are times when you have to go through that […] people have to realize that we’re not kidding anymore.”
Difficult to imagine the holding of such reasoning on channels likely to fall under a sanction from the Authority for the regulation of audiovisual communication (Arcom). However, Thinkerview is no longer a niche channel, lost on the edge of the Internet. With its one million subscribers, its videos broadcast every two weeks collect more than 500,000 views. Often, its audiences even exceed one million. Personalities from all walks of life flock there. In 2022, the deputy of La France Insoumise François Ruffin (880,000 views) succeeded General Didier Castres (975,000 views), sociologist Michel Wieviorka (302,000 views), hydrogeologist Emma Haziza (893,000 views) , or the far-right essayist Charles Gave, accompanied by economic analyst Olivier Delamarche (3.9 million views). Last year, in September, the channel also invited Eric Zemmour (2.5 million views).
Live interviews “without interruption, cutting or editing”
This considerable audience particularly attracts certain publishers, seduced by the idea of speaking to an audience ready to listen to more than two hours of maintenance. “Sky is not someone you can ask easily. But the channel is interesting because we have seen that it has relaunched books that did not necessarily meet with echoes in the traditional media”, points out a Press Officer ; who continues: “By going on this channel, we are talking to an audience that we can no longer reach via traditional media, who are looking for what they identify as freer speech, less subject to the media system , or politics.” She immediately draws a comparison with a giant of the PAF: “If we look at the audience, it’s almost as if we made the choice to send our authors to Cyril Hanouna. But unlike TPMP, Thinkerview’s audience is more likely to buy the featured books. In a way, going to them is more efficient.”
An analysis approved by Christophe Premat, former deputy (PS, GRS) and lecturer at the University of Stockholm, author of an article on “The Rediscovery of a journalistic ethos with the YouTube channel Thinkerview“. “The publishers are happy because the topics covered by the channel – geopolitics, politics, ecology – are close, even for relatively unknown authors, to 200,000, 300,000 views. Former deputy Yves Jégo , for example, in his video, clearly says come because it is easier to reach people who are otherwise difficult to reach.” On its Tipeee page, an online crowdfunding platform, Thinkerview also assumes to do interviews “with alternative perspectives in a world of formatted information”. The bet of transparency is assumed, the videos being live, “without interruption, neither cutting, nor editing”.
“He’s a bit like the Idriss Aberkane of people who read”
The concept, associated with the idea of developing arguments in an extended way, already partly explains the lack of precaution of certain speakers in their speeches. The complicity established between the interviewer and the interviewee no doubt also. In the case of Mélenchon, the formal address beginning the video soon turns into familiarity. In that of Gaël Giraud, it is immediate – the two men know each other, the economist and Sky having already exchanged during a previous interview. Alain Juillet was also a connoisseur of the channel, having participated in a first video in 2018. The men are all the more confident as they probably do not have the impression of speaking in front of a “classic” camera. “It seems silly to say, but some still have the impression that saying something stupid on YouTube is less serious than on television. Slippages become easier,” observes Emma *, another press officer.
However, not all publishing houses view the channel with the same enthusiasm. “Some of our authors want to go there, but I strongly advise them against it. For me, this channel is not a medium like the others. It is oriented”, advances Emma. “It’s a bit like the Idriss Aberkane of people who read,” she says, referring to the lecturer specializing in personal development, known for his conspiratorial statements.
From the “counter discussion”
This ambivalence is representative of something elusive in Thinkerview’s editorial line. With its various speakers, the chain sows the disorder. During the crisis of the yellow vests, she had one of her greatest audience successes by questioning the lawyer Juan Branco, author of Dusk, a far-left pamphlet, with conspiratorial overtones. The video with the provocative title “The illusion of democracy in France?” now exceeds 4.5 million views. The lawyer of certain yellow vests distills his analyzes there: “From the Gracques to all the Descoings networks, they tried to integrate me into these social networks. It was I who said to myself, these people are not admirable […]. They are not corrupt, they are corruption. They succeeded in establishing a system where corruption became legal.” At that time, Thinkerview also received Etienne Chouard, a blogger who popularized the citizens’ initiative referendum (RIC) among the yellow vests, accused of denial. also invited Laurent Obertone, Ring editions, or Eric Zemmour. To me, it’s pretty clear where Thinkerview is, and why it’s so easy for some people to say what they’re thinking out loud,” Emma said.
The explanation, tempting, is also simplistic. Because the channel also received Edgar Morin, the physicist Etienne Klein or the comedian from France Inter Guillaume Meurice. Not really the “France Orange Mécanique” exhibited in Laurent Obertone’s book, then. But it is possible to detect a common thread, an anti-French ideology. “They also interviewed Xenia Federova, the boss of the RT France channel, or the Chinese ambassador”, observes Christophe Premat. A list of iconoclastic interviewees, which is explained by the positioning of the channel: “Their credo is simple: it is to say ‘let’s see how others think’, without necessarily adhering to it.” With a major pitfall: if Sky regularly calls on its “community” to “fact-check” certain figures or facts that lack precision in its interviews, it rarely contradicts its interlocutors. “At its best, Thinkerview is very informative, notes Christophe Premat. At its worst, it’s counter discussion.”
*Name has been changed