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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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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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.