“In less than a year, five journalists from Télégramme were summoned and questioned by the police or the gendarmerie as part of their duties,” he lamented on Wednesday.
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“The sequence is unprecedented.” Samuel Petit, editor-in-chief of Telegramdenounces “a pressure” Who “has never been so strong” on its journalists, while five of them were summoned for hearings in recent months, he shared on his X account on Wednesday April 24, a few hours before the publication of his editorial Thursday in the Breton daily.
“In less than a year, five journalists from Telegram were summoned and interviewed by the police or gendarmerie as part of their functions”deplores Samuel Petit, who sees “a form of distrust towards the work of professional journalists”. It returns in turn to three episodes, respectively occurring in May 2023 for one and April 2024 for the other two.
“More than ever, the right to information is essential”
Above all, he is alarmed by the fact that “this unfortunate series of summons and hearings is unfortunately not only aimed at The Telegram“. He reports a “well-identified context” in which he attributes the “pressure” to several factors. He points out, among other things, the “increasing difficulties in accessing police, gendarmerie and judicial sources”THE “corseting of communication in certain prosecutors” and the “will of the sovereign ministries to control information on disturbances to public order from Paris”.
He thus believes that “more than ever”the right to information is “essential”. Finally, he emphasizes that the information mission “reports to the media and professional journalists whose roles are established and recognized”after recalling that the profession of journalist “is not to relay controlled communication from public authorities, but to inform citizens”.
