Ruth Elkrief placed under police protection, a rare but not exceptional arrangement for journalists

If the Ministry of the Interior refuses to communicate the precise number of journalists under police protection, before the journalist, others had also benefited from this system.

She said to herself “injured” as “female journalist“. Ruth Elkrief is now under police protection after being strongly criticized by Jean-Luc Mélenchon on X. Following tense exchanges on Sunday December 3 on LCI between Ruth Elkrief and LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on the Middle East, the rebellious leader accused the presenter of being a “manipulative” and an “fanatic” who despised Muslims.

Monday, on LCI, the journalist recalled the importance in her eyes of “to define oneself by one’s citizenship and not by one’s religion or one’s origins and not to be referred to it by others”before confiding that she had been “raised in Morocco, with knowledge and intimate affection for cultural and religious traditions, Jewish, Muslim and Christian“.

It was the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin who placed Ruth Elkrief under police protection, judging that Jean-Luc Mélenchon had put her “a target on the back“, while anti-Semitic acts have multiplied in France since the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7. If this device is rare, it is not exceptional for journalists.

Charlie Hebdo, Ophélie Meunier, Martin Boudot…

Because if France is not classified by Reporters Without Borders as a particularly dangerous country for journalists, Ruth Elkrief is not the first to benefit from the attention of the personality protection service.

The members of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, for example, have been since the attack in 2015. The presenter of M6, Ophélie Meunier, also had to be protected in February 2022, after receiving death threats following a report on the Islamism in Roubaix. Another example, at the beginning of 2023: Martin Boudot, the journalist and documentary director who is particularly interested in environmental issues, was also entitled to police protection. He had received death threats from the man nicknamed the “carbon prince”, Cyril Astruc, wanted by Interpol for having embezzled several billion euros.

To date, in France, it is impossible to know how many journalists in total benefit from this type of protection. The Ministry of the Interior does not want to communicate this data. In July 2021, 50 personalities from civil society were under police protection, journalists but not only. The only information communicated: this figure has “clearly” increased since then.

The Ministry of the Interior does not want to reveal the criteria for placement under protection

How are these protections decided? On what criteria? Here again, the Ministry of the Interior did not respond to our requests. But we know for example that, for the journalist Morgan Large who investigates the agri-food sector in Brittany and whose vehicle was sabotaged twice, a request for protection was refused. Very officially, the evaluations of the anti-terrorist services concluded “an absence of threat likely to justify the establishment of close protection”. For their part, at the material time, Reporters Without Borders affirmed that“We only see this type of intimidation in the Balkans.”

After several requests, Morgan Large, who filed a new complaint in March 2023 of which she has not heard, obtained to be registered on the SIP file. In the event of a call to 17, the police have direct access to the file of the threatened person. After moving, for safety reasons, the reporter is now domiciled at the municipal social action center in her town.

At StreetPress, an independent media outlet specializing, among other things, in investigating police violence and monitoring the far right and which receives numerous death threats from far-right groups, no police protection has been announced either. Here again, it is Reporters Without Borders which provides its support. The NGO calls on the courts to conduct a rigorous investigation and convict the perpetrators.