The investigation of The Press which led to the fall of comedian Philippe Bond published in recent days has been likened by some to a “people’s tribunal”.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
” Who’s next ? Who will be pilloried next week? “, we could read.
“What is needed is to file a complaint with the POLICE”, added another.
As if what had been published was only a collection of rumors and allegations without much value from which had been launched a call for a public lynching.
“The judicial court does not work, that’s why we are going to the people’s court”, added retired judge Nicole Gibeault in an admittedly more nuanced outing, where she says “respect” the choice women who dare to testify, but where she nevertheless uses this unfortunate expression…
Now, what is a people’s tribunal?
It is the people who make themselves judge by imposing decisions without appeal.
It is a population that appropriates the right to do justice without the rigor required by the courts of real law.
Very sorry, but that’s not what Philippe Bond has had to deal with in recent days.
If the comedian had been lynched in the public square at the beginning of the month after the release of his colleague Thomas Levac, who launched that “Philippe Bond is a rapist” in a podcast, yes, we would be in full “popular court”. It was then an explosive statement tossed without evidence in the public space.
The same would have been true if one of the many people who have admitted in recent days to being aware of what Bond is accused of had admitted it on social networks. And this, simply relying on what he had been told right and left.
But the journalistic investigation published Thursday is not just an allegation launched without evidence in the public square. It is far from hearsay, rumors and “I was told that”.
Rather, it is the culmination of meticulous, long-term work that spanned… five years!
Journalists Stéphanie Vallet and Katia Gagnon had indeed dug into what “everyone knew” from 2017 to The Press.
They had spoken to several of the women who accuse Bond today. They had then turned over each stone. They had cross-checked the testimonies, checked the details, tried to understand what had happened in particular during the famous wrap party of 2007.
Initially, women were on the record, but a downward movement began during the survey. Result: the journalists had almost no more testimonies with their visors raised.
Katia and Stéphanie (who is today at the To have to) tried again in 2020 to reveal what was, as we can see today, an open secret. Without more success: most women still did not want to express themselves publicly by revealing their name, which is of course completely understandable.
Each survey is a different case that requires us to think about the conditions to be met before publication. And in this case, in addition to the testimonies with raised visor, we wanted to add testimonies which would have related facts more recent than 2007, which we had not succeeded in finding at the time.
“It was heavy and frustrating to have collected such testimonies and not be able to do anything”, explains Katia today.
But without that precious key of eyewitness accounts in the case of Philippe Bond, we simply couldn’t publish.
All of this proves two things.
First that the world is slowly changing since the beginning of the movement #weather.
Journalists Charles-Éric Blais-Poulin and Patrick Lagacé succeeded this time in collecting the testimonies of eight women, four of whom agreed to speak with their faces uncovered.
Rigorous and tedious journalistic work based on the documentation collected by their colleagues since 2017, as well as the discovery by Patrick and Charles of new women who say they have suffered Bond’s misconduct in other places, at other periods, making it possible to expand the dossier.
The journalists also got their hands on the famous letter from the wrap party in which Mr Bond apologized to his ‘offended’ female colleagues for ‘going overboard’.
Of course, the release of Thomas Levac loosened the tongues. But that takes nothing away from the courage of Valérie Claing, Mathilde Laurier, Corinne Paquin and Lisa Matthews, who agreed to have their names revealed. This allowed us, this time, to publish the survey.
Then it proves that the media like The Press do not publish “baseless allegations” tossed about by the first comer and then let the people decide their fate.
The investigation of the last few days is based on testimonies which may not have been given in court, but whose credibility has nevertheless been tested, validated and confronted within the framework of a professional journalistic approach, in all compliance with professional codes of ethics. Testimonies corroborated directly or indirectly for the most part.
This is why the first reaction was not that of Bell and evenko, but of Philippe Bond, who decided on his own to retire from public life. Not because he was pushed out by gossip and mob.