The editorial director of the French regional daily Provence was sanctioned after a report deemed “ambiguous” on a visit by President Emmanuel Macron to Marseille, a decision against which journalists voted for an indefinite strike on Friday.
The affair follows the publication on Thursday of a large headline, “He is gone and we are still here…”, on the front page of the newspaper.
The accompanying photo showed two people, from behind, watching police officers on patrol pass, 48 hours after the French president’s surprise visit to the Mediterranean city, to launch an operation described as unprecedented against drug trafficking.
Following this publication, the editorial director, Aurélien Viers, was laid off for a week, management indicated, confirming information from the National Union of Journalists (SNJ), which also mentions a summons for a preliminary interview to dismissal, which is the rule in this matter.
In an insert published on the front page of the newspaper on Friday, the publication’s director, Gabriel d’Harcourt, presents the newspaper’s “deepest apologies” for a publication which “misled our readers”.
“This quote on the front page and the photo […] may have led us to believe that we were complacently giving voice to drug traffickers determined to taunt public authority, which in no way reflects the values and editorial line of your newspaper,” he wrote.
On the inside pages, the quote was attributed to a resident of the impoverished town of Castellane, commenting after the presidential visit: “It’s funny they found all the necessary means to supervise the president’s visit. He left, and we are still here, in the same trouble. »
“The construction of the front page”
Other articles mentioned the “guerrilla war on the communications field” between dealers and the Ministry of the Interior, or “the backstage of an improvised presidential show”.
“The rest of the editorial treatment is very good,” Mr. d’Harcourt told AFP, but even if the quote is correctly attributed on the inside page, “the problem comes from the construction of the front page, which can lead to this interpretation”.
“We have the impression that we are spokespersons for the dealers”, which “is contrary to our values and the role we want to play in Marseille and in the region”, added Mr. d’Harcourt.
Gathered in a general assembly, the daily’s journalists voted 79% for an indefinite strike, denouncing “inadmissible editorial interference”. “We cannot let this pass,” Audrey Letellier, union representative of the SNJ, the majority in the editorial team, told AFP.
The newspaper, owned by the shipowner CMA CGM, will not appear from Saturday.