MARSEILLE, March 22, 2024 (AFP) – The news editor of a regional French daily has been suspended after a front-page headline critical of President Emmanuel Macron, management said Friday, causing outrage across the newsroom.
Macron on Tuesday launched a major operation against drug trafficking in the southern port city of Marseille and elsewhere, saying that gangland battles that last year left dozens dead had made life a misery for residents.
Following Macron’s Marseille visit, La Provence daily published a front page Thursday showing two people, presumably drug dealers, watching a police patrol. The accompanying headline said “He’s gone, but we’re still here”.
On the basis of the front page, La Provence’s news editor Aurelien Viers was suspended for failing to follow its “values and editorial line”, according to the paper’s managing editor Gabriel d’Harcourt.
In an article “To Our Readers” published Friday, d’Harcourt said that the front-page quote and picture “could lead people to believe that we agree to give drug dealers a voice so they can mock the public authority”.
In an article inside Thursday’s La Provence, the front-page quote was actually attributed to a resident of a poor Marseille neighbourhood, named only as Brahim, who said that the city “found the means necessary to protect the president during his visit. He’s gone, but we’re still here, in the same hell”.
D’Harcourt told AFP that his paper’s coverage of the visit had been “very good”, except for the front page, “where you get the impression that we’re spokespeople for the dealers”.
The front page was “contrary to our roles and the role we want to play in Marseille and the surrounding region”, he said.
SNJ, the main union at La Provence, told AFP that the paper’s journalists were “scandalised” by Viers’s suspension.
A general staff assembly would decide later Friday on any protest action, it said.
La Provence, published in Marseille, has a daily circulation of around 70,000.
It is owned by CMA CGM Medias, which belongs to Rodolphe Saade, a Franco-Lebanese billionaire businessman.
Saade, who has other high-profile media interests, this week announced that he would also buy Altice Media, which owns broadcasters BFMTV and RMC.
Asked during an Altice staff meeting whether he would seek to censor unfavourable news about his media interests, Saade replied: “I wouldn’t like it, and I would let that be known”. But, added the media mogul, “I wouldn’t interfere”.
