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French news editor suspended over Macron-related headline

The news editor of a regional French daily has been suspended after a front-page headline critical of President Emmanuel Macron, management said on Friday, causing outrage across the newsroom.

Published: 22 March 2024 16:14 CET

French news editor suspended over Macron-related headline

A cyclist rides past the headquarters of French regional daily newspaper La Provence, in Marseille, southeastern France, on February 15, 2022. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)

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.

Si le directeur de @laprovence @aviers doit être renvoyé à cause de cette Une, qui est forte, maligne, juste, populaire au bon sens du terme, cela augure très mal des intentions et des pratiques d’un nouveau géant des médias… @laurentguimier @LaTribune @BFMTV pic.twitter.com/QRI4UC2THr

— claude askolovitch (@askolovitchC) March 22, 2024

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”.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.