What helps to make the film credible is that all the important political journalists, editors, managing editor play themselves including Didier Pourquery, Abel Mestre,Thomas Wieder, Raphaëlle Bacqué, Ariane Chemin (one of the oldest), Arnaud Leparmentier, Caroline Monnot,David Revault d'Allonnes, Florence Aubenas, Patrick Roger, Serge Michel, Sylvia Zappi, Luc Bronner, Aline Leclerc,Patrick Jarreau, Cécile Prieur, Gérard Courtois, Nabil Wakim, Nathaniel Herzberg, Josyane Savigneau,Erik Izraelewicz, Jean Plantu. etc.
We see in this semi-documentary how the journalists collectively decide what the front page banner headline should be, how they vent their personal opinions, argue with each other to ensure that the correct political angle (centre left) is maintained. During such discussions, we also have a chance to hear how they should position itself vis-à-vis competition from television and social internet networks like twitter, SMS, Facebook etc.as well as some well founded fears on how they should move on and if necessary to adapt to this new challenge posed by the electronic media, how some think they should concentrate more on opinion rather than straightforward "contemporaneous reporting" in which they could in no way compete with the instantaneous and live reporting by the televised media. We see too the problems and pressures faced by its journalists on a day to day basis and they put their stories or columns together as well as the kind of jokes they crack from time to time to relax themselves. There's nothing fancy about the camera work. What is interesting about this film is not its cinematography but the insights it gives us on how the journalists actually think on various issues, their opinion on the quality of the presidential candidates, their prognostication on their chances and how they must work on a tightrope to preserve that delicate balance between its political stance without jeopardizing the relative "objectivity"of its analysis and respect for the "facts". A most enlightening film. When I see on the screen how the young reporter had to extemporize his story on the spot and then wracking his brain to find the right angle, the right style, the right tone, the right word and then hurriedly telephoning back whatever it was that he's got and then having second thoughts on his first, second or third draft and then telephoning back to his office to make the necessary corrections, the film brought back a flood of bitter sweet memories of those hectic days of yore of how one got to dictate the relevant stories over the telephone to another reporter back at the newsroom who had to type it all out on the electronic typewriter at the fastest speed humanly possible before submitting it to the editors for touching up and deciding on the page position and font style to beat the deadline of the "stop press" and those sighs of relief when that's finally done despite all the misgivings of whether it could have been done better. Those were the days!
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