France: Presidential tapping scandal rumbles on

October 4th, 2011

The scandal of surveillance of Le Monde journalists’ telephones threatens to derail Nicolas Sarkozy’s bid for re-election . Natasha Lehrer reports
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Tunisia: France’s faux pas

January 15th, 2011

French ministers denied Tunisia was a dictatorship and offered Ben Ali’s regime police support to deal with the recent protests. Myriam Francois-Cerrah explains how France found itself on the backfoot
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Sarkozy calls for web censorship

October 12th, 2010

In a recent visit to the Pope, President of France Nicolas Sarkozy remarked that greater regulation of the internet was needed.  President Sarkozy stated that “regulating the internet to correct the excesses and abuses that arise from the total absence of rules is a moral imperative” while making a speech to the Embassy of France to the Holy See. This pronouncement is not the first indication of the President’s aim of regulating the internet. He described internet piracy as “looting” in a speech made while visiting Jean-Baptiste Corot.  Critics say President Sarkozy’s desire to regulate the internet is born out of fear and a desire for control.

Lay preaching

August 25th, 2009

The reignition of the burka debate in France reflects the political class’s fears for the state’s treasured “laïcité”, writes Agnès Poirier
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France: arrest of former newspaper publisher sparks protests

December 8th, 2008

The treatment of Vittorio Filippis, former publisher of Libération,
signals the deteriorating situation for the media in France. Natasha Lehrer reports
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The end of the entente cordiale

March 26th, 2008

As President Nicolas Sarkozy visits Britain, Natasha Lehrer looks at the changing relationship between France’s political elite and the media

In a radical break with French tradition, the amorous antics of the country’s President have lately become fair game for the French press. Famously, de Gaulle was the only post-war president to have remained faithful to his wife. President Mitterrand’s mistress and daughter lived in elegant anonymity for 20 years in a stunning rive gauche apartment, with rent was paid by the state, untroubled by any press intrusion into the couple’s private life whatsoever. But since Sarkozy came to power the hallowed French tradition of respect for the private lives of the famous and powerful appears to have begun to change.

As recently as last May, the old pieties regarding privacy were still being spouted when it was ‘revealed’ that the presidential candidate, Segolène Royal, had officially split up with her long-time partner, Socialist Party (PS) leader François Hollande. That there was trouble in paradise between the first couple of the PS was one of the worst kept secrets in Paris, but sticking to the old-fashioned Mitterand principle, no mention of it had ever appeared in the media, even in the outlets who favoured a win by Sarkozy. Worse, when it did come out, in a press release from Royal herself, there was a palpable sense of outrage amongst the Parisian chattering classes that the cardinal rule that the hoi polloi has no business knowing anything of the intimate lives of those in the public eye had been broken.

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