Again this Tuesday, September 15, on the set of TF 1's “13 Hours”, sitting on a stool, relaxed face and cards in hand, Jean-Pierre Pernaut is the “boss”.
In 32 years at the helm of the JT, which he will leave in December, the journalist has imposed local information and field speech as editorial lines, without a net and without a mask.
Decryption of a method that appeals to six million faithful every day.
A precursor.
When he moved, at 38, in the chair of Yves Mourousi, in 1988, the young Pernaut had to return to France 2, which stole from TF 1 the first place in the hearings.
It blows a wind of modernity, by opening the “13 Hours” on the regions, to “address France”.
A tailor-made suit for this Picard, raised against too “Parisian” treatment of the news.
A head of the family.
It was he who created at the end of the 1980s for his “13 Hours” a network of correspondents in Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, Lille… Today distributed within 19 independent press agencies.
He calls them in the morning, and even sings Adamo with them in the choir they created!
"He is the head of the family and we are all his children," smiles Sébastien Hembert, correspondent in Lille (Nord) for 20 years.
He tells us:
tell me what's going on with you
.
He does not want interviews with specialists, reports that are too technical or too institutional, but people who are in the street, in the market.
He was the first to devote five minutes to the Dunkirk carnival.
"
Without teleprompter
.
The presenter, appreciated for his humility, tells people, young and old.
“The
13 Hours
has always tried not to be locked in a bubble and to be in real life,” he insists.
With him, traditions, landscapes, regional identities and popular festivals pass through the doors of the sacrosanct television news, after an opening on the weather and little on disasters.
And always without teleprompter: if there is indeed a backup on his set, Pernaut the natural only has eyes for his cards and his texts written an hour before, sometimes at the cost of hesitation and improvisations. .
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Rants live
.
He is cash on the air, Jean-Pierre, when he distills his comments or cries from the heart.
“We often say to each other,
but what is he going to do to us just behind the report
?
»Says a journalist.
Wind turbines, fuel taxes, limitation to 80km / h, prices on the markets… Pernaut stings to the quick.
On the coronavirus, he is annoyed at the non-respect of barrier gestures, denounces the "unconscious" and does not mince words against the government, guilty according to him of having "wasted time" and not having been enough " alarmist ”.
“Jean-Pierre, you're a killer,” Bigard told him on social networks.
“He has this viewer side in him, he's not just a presenter.
Mr. and Mrs. Everyone have the same reaction as him, ”decrypts a faithful.
The quiet force.
Pernaut renewed his news report without ever changing course: to question the French as closely as possible.
He launched “SOS villages” to defend small businesses, “the most beautiful market in France”, “Your story” and series from the Nièvre to the Ardennes.
“He does not really look at what the competitors are doing,” breathes Jacques Rieg-Boivin, correspondent in the East.
“And often speaks to us of young audiences.
He wants topics on the latest teen dance or digital ”.
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Touched, never sunk.
His style earned him sarcasm and a puppet at the Guignols of Canal +.
“He was really a character and not a creation.
It was necessary to account for the regional purring.
It was the voice of the brave man who is interested in his country ”, remembers his imitator Yves Lecocq.
Pernaut says that the puppet never made him laugh.
In “La Bonne Soupe”, a book devoted to the 13 Hours Newscast (Les Arènes, 2007), the journalists of the Les Jours site Isabelle Roberts and Raphaël Garrigos criticize a “permanent micro-sidewalk”.
“It is not information, because it does not inform about the state of the world.
It's more of a magazine than a newspaper, where he nostalgically nurtures his audience around the small values of forgotten trades, ”regrets Raphaël Garrigos today.
VIDEO. Jean-Pierre Pernaut: "I decided to pass the torch on"
Transparency
.
Long target of the celebrity press and rumors, “JPP” announced himself to be suffering from cancer, in the wake of his operation on September 25, 2018. “With social networks, total transparency must exist between people known and viewers, ”he confided to us shortly after, cured.
Respected by his peers
. "He knew how to take the pulse of this France, at best ignored", compliments the former presenter of France 2 David Pujadas. “He had an editorial vision from the start that met the public. With him, it's tinged with common sense, ”observes the former presenter of the 20 Hours of TF 1 Laurence Ferrari. “In a report with very anxiety-provoking information, he brought a bowl of oxygen,” notes Marie-Laure Augry. “Welcome to the JT post! »Launches Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, the other great incarnation of the news on TF 1 for 21 years.
