Lagardère Kills Another Embarrassing Sarkozy Story?

France is a twitter over what some believe is a love letter from someone not his wife that President Sarkozy was carrying with his papers a couple of weeks back, but the story about it that was to have appeared in the weekly gossip magazine Choc got killed shortly before the magazine went to press. Choc is owned by Arnaud Largardère who seems to be rather active in protecting the man he calls his “brother”.

Actually Choc was journalistically pretty smart on this one. It saw a normal picture of Sarkozy leaving a meeting and the handwritten letter instead of being inside a red folder was carried outside in full view. Choc apparently blew up the photo to focus just on the note and Voilà! there was language such as “"I have the feeling that I haven't seen you for an eternity and I miss you .... a million kisses.”

Once that information got out a local council vice-president said she sent the note to her old friend Mrs. Sarkozy, but French words are spelt differently if they are intended for a male or female and this note, according to the linguists, was written to a man. Voilà again, except the writer, Isabelle Balkany, made the round of news shows at the weekend insisting she wrote the letter to Mrs. Sarkozy. Maybe she’s a poor speller!

No matter what, why was Mr. Sarkozy carrying the letter? For that the Élysée Palace spokesperson had no answer.

So Choc was ready to publish its two page spread and voilà (again) the story got killed. But as has now become the custom in French media circles, when a story gets killed it finds its way to the Bakchich web site for all the world to see.

The magazine’s editor has denied claims he was pressured by the President’s office to drop the story, but there are media reports that Largardère stepped in instead.

Within the past year or so there have been a couple of occasions where Largardère has seemed to step in to send messages to his staff that embarrassing the Sarkozy family is not on. It seems that Mrs. Sarkozy didn’t vote in the second and deciding round of the election and the Journal du Dimanche, a weekly owned by the Lagardère group, had the story exclusively but didn’t run it. 

At the time Reporters Without Borders voiced concern. “Respect for privacy is very important, but under no circumstances should it be used to suppress news and information that is unquestionably of public interest,” the press freedom organization said. “We do not know if direct or indirect pressure really was put on Journal du Dimanche’s management in this case. But managing editor Jacques Espérandieu acknowledged to AFP that he received calls ‘insisting on the very private and personal nature’ of this information.’”

Espérandieu said it was his decision not to print the story because he could not get a reaction from Cécilia Sarkozy or anyone close to her and because he thought the information was “a private matter.” A web site claimed the story was killed because of pressure from Lagardère and the then president-elect’s aides. The claim was denied by Sarkozy spokesman Frank Louvrier.

Reporters Without Borders added, “We obviously cannot forget the precedent of Alain Genestar’s dismissal as executive editor of Paris Match, also owned by the Lagardère group, after publishing a photo of Cécilia Sarkozy with her then partner in August, 2005. Even if we are not in the habit of meddling in the internal editorial decisions of privately-owned news media, we urge journalists to be on their guard. Given Nicolas Sarkozy’s friendship with several media group owners, we will be very watchful as his presidential term gets under way, and we will be ready to criticize anything resembling government pressure on the media.”

On the Choc incident, as of yet, we’ve not seen any comment from the group. – Phil Stone September 10, 2007

Keywords:Lagardère

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