Among the political figures encountered by Jean-Pierre Elkabach, there is François Mitterrand. Between the journalist and the socialist president, a complex relationship developed.
“François Mitterrand is elected President of the Republic…” On May 10, 1981 at 8 p.m., when Jean-Pierre Elkabbach announced on television the result of the second round of the presidential election, he was well aware that his near future would be complicated. The same evening, at Place de la Bastille in Paris, supporters of François Mitterrand demanded the dismissal of the journalist from Antenne 2, the ancestor of France 2.
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Labeled close to the former Giscardian power, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach was ousted and unemployed for several months. But he quickly found work at Europe 1, thanks to the intervention… of François Mitterrand, he says.
“A form of independence”
So it’s a return through the back door in 1983, with the daily radio show “Discoveries“, in the afternoon, which he will then make grow… until he receives the President of the Republic himself. It is well under the socialist power that Jean-Pierre Elkabbach begins his comeback: “I am proud to be able to symbolize little by little, after justified or unjustified criticism at times, maintaining a form of pluralism and independence.”
The two men are as if linked: whether as director of Europe 1 or then of France Télévisions in the 1990s, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach regularly sees François Mitterrand, especially on weekends. The two men talk a lot about death, as the president battles cancer.
Long and uncompromising interviews with the president
In 1993, François Mitterrand naturally chose the journalist for a series of long interviews filmed face-to-face for more than a year. Jean-Pierre Elkabbach questions him in particular about his past during the Occupation, about his time in the administration of the Vichy regime: “Are you going to Vichy? And why? While there is the government of capitulation and the anti-Jewish laws, are you going to Vichy? Why are you not going to London or Algiers, I ask you the question.” The president responds: “For anti-Jewish laws, which correct nothing and forgive nothing, were legislation against foreign Jews, of which I knew nothing.”
And then there are these questions about his illness, to which François Mitterrand will answer without hiding anything: “To this day, I have not been prevented from doing anything. I have not acquired any complexes or feelings of impossibility. At this point, it should last a while.”, then explains the president. “If the suffering is such that it weighs on me to the point that I will put the consideration of my fate before that of the duties of State, then it is obvious that I must leave. Completing my mandate is an obligation I contracted when I asked the French to elect me, which they did for seven years.“, he concluded.
January 8, 1996. François Mitterrand died in his apartment in Paris. Jean-Pierre Elkabbach says he will be one of the rare journalists invited to pay their respects, in front of the remains of this man who will have impacted part of his professional life. In his biography, “The Shores of Memory”, in 2022, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach then writes: “I had to question the president without being impressed and live up to what the French expected.“