{"id":990,"date":"2008-12-08T12:29:50","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T12:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=990"},"modified":"2017-01-09T12:09:14","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T12:09:14","slug":"france-arrest-of-former-newspaper-publisher-sparks-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=990","title":{"rendered":"France: arrest of former newspaper publisher sparks protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The treatment of Vittorio Filippis, former publisher of Lib\u00e9ration<\/em>,
\nsignals the deteriorating situation for the media in France. Natasha Lehrer<\/em> reports<\/strong>
\n
\nA demonstration was held on 5 December outside Paris\u2019s Palais de la Justice to protest against the heavy-handed treatment of the former publisher of the left-wing French daily newspaper Lib\u00e9ration<\/em>, Vittorio de Filippis. De Filippis was arrested early in the morning of 28 November at his home in the outskirts of Paris; when he protested the arrest one of the police officers called him ‘worse than racaille<\/em>\u2019, (a derogatory term that roughly means \u2018scum\u2019, notoriously used by Nicholas Sarkozy when he was interior minister to describe young men living in certain tough banlieues). De Filippis was insulted in the presence of his 14-year-old son before being handcuffed behind his back and taken in a police van to the basement \u2018holding pen\u2019 of the Palais de Justice. During his wait to be charged, he was strip-searched. His ordeal lasted for five hours.<\/p>\n

His crime? During de Filippis\u2019 brief tenure as publisher of Lib\u00e9ration<\/em>, from June to December 2006, a reader\u2019s comment was left on the newspaper\u2019s website concerning a libel case being brought by Xaviel Niel, founder of the internet company Free, against the newspaper. Niel, who has already brought and lost four lawsuits against the newspaper, brought a third in response to the reader\u2019s comment. As publisher of the newspaper at the time de Filippis is considered responsible for all editorial content, even one left by a member of the public. Libel, in France, is a criminal offense.<\/p>\n

The arrest came after de Filippis had apparently ignored three mailed summons from Muriel Josie, the investigating magistrate. Whilst it caused uproar from political parties on both sides of the spectrum, and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Lefebvre, a spokesman for the UMP, President Sarkozy\u2019s party, called the arrest and interrogation \u2018surreal\u2019, the response from the government has been muted. Interior Minister Mich\u00e8le Alliot-Marie, in a faint echo of Jacqui Smith\u2019s protestations over Damian Green\u2019s recent arrest, merely said that \u2018The police officers followed procedures\u2019 and were simply acting on the orders of the investigating judge handling the case. Rachida Dati, France\u2019s beleaguered Justice Minister, considered the police handling of the arrest to be reguli\u00e8re<\/em>, meaning regular, or reasonable.<\/p>\n

The affair comes at a time when there is increased concern over press freedom in France. With a long tradition of self-censorship in the French press, there is justified additional concern that several of the country\u2019s media barons are close friends of President Sarkozy. Sarkozy recently added to an already unhealthy state of affairs by announcing a new law that would allow the president to hire and fire the head of the country\u2019s state broadcaster.<\/p>\n

Paris-based organization Reporters sans Fronti\u00e8res puts France in 35th place in the world press freedom rankings for 2008, down four places from 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The treatment of Vittorio Filippis, former publisher of Lib\u00e9ration, signals the deteriorating situation for the media in France. Natasha Lehrer reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4,581],"tags":[7375,141,305],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83700,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/83700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}