For a year, the one who was the most watched journalist of the PAF has been in the midst of legal turmoil. The scandal erupted in February 2021, with the rape complaint of a novelist, Florence Porcel, which triggered an avalanche of testimonies. But an insistent rumor had been circulating since the 1980s in the Parisian media environment, even in the corridors of a school of journalism. For “Additional investigation”, Romain Verley collected the testimony of a former leader of the Practical Institute of Journalism (IPJ).
Catherine Lambret says she was alerted by journalists from Antenne 2 or TF1 who gave lessons in her school: “Each time, they advised me, since the year 83, 84, and after, the following years, never to send girls where PPDA could be.”
The director of the IPJ then took the decision to send only male trainees to the editorial office where PPDA worked. “For ten years, I never sent a girl on an internship at TF1“, she says. No girls, because Patrick Poivre d’Arvor had the reputation “to attack girls“, according to her. The accusation is serious, “but all the editorial journalists said so“, emphasizes Catherine Lambret.
“[Les journalistes] said that you should not stay in the editorial staff of TF1 at the end of the day, be the last to leave, because otherwise, PPDA risked throwing themselves on you.
Catherine Lambret, former director of the IPJ (Practical Institute of Journalism)to “Further investigation”
The director then chose to protect her students. In 2015, as a recent directory of former students shows, no female journalist working at TF1 had started her career there when she left the IPJ.
To date, 26 women have testified against Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and 16 have filed complaints, including seven for rape.
Extract from “PPDA, the fall of an untouchable”, a document to see in “Complément d’Enquête” on April 28, 2022.
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