"Transparency to what point?" asks French daily Libération. The question coincides with the publication of a book Sexe, Mensonges et Médias ("Sex, Lies and Media") by Jean Quatremer, Libération's correspondent in Brussels, on the Dominique Strass-Kahn affair. The book has reopened the debate on the attitude of the French press towards the private lives of politicians.
From François Mitterrand's prostate cancer and secret "love child" in the 1980s to the mid-1990s, to the abnormal behaviour of "DSK", the paper reviews all the cases to which the press was privy but kept silent. "The lies, the refusal to investigate...the taste for conniving with the powerful" – these bad habits of the French press are scrutinised by Quatremer, who, in 2007 when Strauss-Kahn was appointed as head of the International Monetary Fund, wrote -
The only real problem Strauss-Kahn has, is his relationship to women. Too pressing, he often comes close to crossing the line of harassment. This flaw is known to the media, but no one talks about it (we are in France).
These words went unnoticed until the man heralded by the opinion polls as the front-runner for the French Socialist Party candidacy for the 2012 election was arrested in New York and charged with attempted rape. "There is a before and an after DSK," Libération's leader says -
Our media's all too timid modus operandi can now be seen with a new eye. It is true that journalists are friends with politicians. 'Stay away from power!' is the primary principal, an American journalist used to say. In France, we have dinner together, we go on holidays together, we have love affairs, we are graduates of the same schools, and so on. There is no tradition of investigation into the private world of politics. [...] The public consequences of the President's private life have remained in the shadows. This is because of a preference for commentary over cold facts. And also because of the lack of independence of public television stations. Let us point out that the President of the Republic appoints the station's heads and choses, with his royal hand, the journalists who will be allowed the privilege of interviewing the monarch.
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