Defending the indefensible

Oh dear. There’s a tremendous polemic in progress here in France at the moment as journalists get their knickers well and truly twisted over the coverage of the nation’s most prominent sweethearts.

Cameras may have been a-clicking and headline writers a-titling after last weekend’s romantic photo op at Euro Disney as the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his latest belle, Carla Bruni, took to the roller coasters, but one broadcaster is adamantly refusing to air the story.

TF1, France’s main private television channel, has so far not mentioned the happy couple in any of its news broadcasts.

On Monday evening, after all the national dailies had carried front page pictures and radio ‘phone-ins had jabbered on about little else all day, the five million or so viewers of TF1’s prime time news could well have expected a comment or two.

After all at the same time, over on the country’s main public television channel, France 2, the news team’s head honcho, David Pujadas, was happily anchoring a 10-minute wrap of the Disney fable, including a video taken by a happy member of the public.

But no, TF1 had decided that the Sarkozy-Bruni day out was not newsworthy. In fact it wasn’t even a story.

The channel’s main news presenter, Patrick Poivre D’Arvor (PPDA), has since been popping up everywhere else defending the decision. Apparently his, and the rest of TF1’s thinking is that as there has been no official comment from the president, there is nothing to report – ergo there isn’t a story. The private life of the president, PPDA maintains, is exactly that, and should not be covered.

Somehow though those claims seem to be full of holes and they certainly don’t wash with the rest of the media’s thinking.

Most editors - television, radio and press – consider Sarkozy’s very public appearance with Bruni to have been sanctioned by the president himself as a chance for pictures to be taken of the two together. No statement may have been made, but the photos were authorised in terms of when and how they were taken.

There was no long lens involved, no secrecy and there have been no attempts to prevent publication.

The photos are in the public domain, and while it’s certainly open to question as to whether they are actually interesting, they are of interest. They were authorised and they are therefore news.


Still TF1 stands by its decision, claiming that the president’s private life is of no interest (to its viewers) and Tuesday evening’s programme was equally void of any mention. Of course it all raises the question as to how journalists decide what is newsworthy – a process seldom open to great viewing public.

It surely cannot be simple payback time as PPDA, his lunchtime equivalent Jean-Pierre Pernault and the weekend anchor, Claire Chazal, have all had their private lives plastered over the front pages at one time or another. And they all have a significant role in deciding the contents of the news broadcasts.

The invasion of privacy argument is even harder for TF1 to justify in light of the fact that just a couple of months ago the channel led its new programme with Sarkozy’s divorce on the same day that the train drivers brought the country to a standstill on the first of their national strikes.

And of course the delightful twist in all of this is the extra coverage the (non) story is getting everywhere – except TF1 of course.