Politicians' private lives - are there limits to the questions journalists should ask?

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (often referred to in the French media as NKM), the former minister of ecology and spokesperson for Nicolas Sarkozy during his presidential election campaign, was the guest on Jean-Jacques Bourdin's programme on RMC radio BFM-TV on Wednesday morning.

It's a daily programme in which Bourdin poses questions to his guests (usually, but not always politicians) on their views of some of the stories making the headlines.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Jean-Jacques Bourdin
(BFM TV screenshot)

No prizes for guessing how he began the interview with NKM: that infamous Valérie Trieweiler Tweet which seems to have overshadowed any real news stories that might have been around over the past couple of days.

NKM began her reply by saying that mixing private and political matters was never a good idea.

She expanded on her reasoning for a couple of minutes adding that, although a very public figure, she had kept her husband and children out of the usual media glare, refusing requests from glossy magazines (Paris Match) for photo shoots and keeping her private life exactly that.

While admitting that some politicians thrived on the sort of exposure they received and journalists often chased those sorts of stories, NKM said it was a mistake..

She cited an opponent in the constituency she's contesting in Sunday's parliamentary elections, mentioning that he had talked about her family.

And that's where the interview became tricky and decidedly uncomfortable- for Bourdin, NKM and anyone watching.

"You mean your brother's suicide?" Bourdin asked, forcing NKM to respond to something she has not spoken about publicly; the death of her younger brother, Etienne, in May after he took an overdose.

Clearly shocked, NKM hesitated a moment before replying, criticising Bourdin for having asked the question in such an abrupt manner.

"I am a public figure and I have another brother (Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, one of the founders of the online electronic commerce website PriceMinister.com) who is a public figure," she said.

"But that's not the case for everyone in the family and most definitely not my brother who died," she continued.

"I was shocked when I saw that one of my opponents had posted the information of my brother's suicide on his blog. I found it outrageous for my brother and for my mother."

The real issue though surely has to be whether Bourdin was right to ask such a personal question not just in the manner in which he did, but also in a way which required NKM to reply.

Aren't there or shouldn't there be limits?

NKM could hardly have sat there and said nothing, could she?

French holiday "miracle baby" stories

Extra value in this end-of-year piece in that it's a "triple pack" if you will.

Three stories connected to each other only in the sense that they all happened in France over the past week and in each instance involved a baby or a young child.

In two of the cases, the child survived in circumstances that really didn't bode well - to say the very least.

In the third...well it's just an uplifting tale that's surely guaranteed to warm the heart and bring a smile to even the most curmudgeonly reader.

There's sadness in the tale of the first "miracle baby", a 20-month-old girl from the town of Harfleur in northern France.

Just a couple of days before Christmas her 26-year-old mother, who was going through a separation, made her way to the cliffs of the nearby coastal town of Étretat and jumped to her death, her daughter in her arms.

An alert had been raised earlier in the afternoon by the woman's husband who had reportedly 'phoned the emergency services to say that he was concerned about her mental state and the welfare of the child after they had left the family home in nearby Harfleur.

Helicopters were dispatched in the area and two bodies spotted at the foot of the cliffs.

"The mother gave no sign of life, but the girl blinked," Christopher Margrit, a spokesman for the emergency services said.

The girl was rushed to hospital with a head injury and several fractures, her survival attributed to the fact that her body had probably been cushioned by the body of her mother in the 70-metre fall.

On Monday a two-year-old boy also escaped death, this time unscathed, in the ski resort of Arêches-Beaufort in the French Alps.

He was buckled into the child seat as his parents were unloading the car when, in spite of the hand brake being on, the vehicle began sliding backwards.

Although his mother and aunt tried in vain to rescue him, they couldn't reach him in time and the car fell 70 metres into a ravine near where it had been parked, saved from overturning by coming to rest on a tree stump.

When the emergency services arrived on the scene they were able to free the child, who was apparently still ensconced in his seat and emerged without a scratch.

The only injury incurred in the incident was to the aunt who had a fallen into the ravine in her rescue attempt. She was hospitalised with a suspected broken leg.

And finally, as promised, that heart-warming tale, which involves life rather than death in the shape of Tyfène, a 12-year-old girl in the north-west of the country who acted as the midwife in the birth of her sister.

She has become a veritable heroine in France after her exploits on December 26.

When her mother, Stéphanie, went into labour early in the morning the day after Christmas, the father-to-be, Fabrice Raoult, proved to be less than up to the task of handling the situation, and it was Tyfène who took matters in hand.

She dispatched him into the garden "to get some fresh air", rang the emergency services to inform them that the contractions had begun, but was informed there would probably be some delay in their arrival because driving conditions were difficult with black ice covering the roads on the way to the hamlet of Couëdic where the family lived.

The 12-year-old (and it's probably worth repeating that) kept her cool though.

"After a moment of panic, I quickly came to my senses and realised I was the only one who could help," she confidently recounted after the event.

"The baby came out and I washed and placed her on mummy's tummy," she continued rather matter-of-factly in numerous interviews she has given since.

"I didn't dare cut the cord but five minutes later the emergency services arrived to do that," she added.

Just for the record, baby sister Maëlys weighed in at 3,380kg and she, along with mother and older sister are doing just fine.

So is the father apparently, who by all accounts is rightly proud of his 12-year-old step daughter.

France - Teacher who hanged himself - pupil admits he lied

The sad circle is almost complete on the story first reported here last month of the teacher who committed suicide following accusations that he had hit one of his pupils.

On Friday the 15-year-old boy admitted that he had made the whole story up. His teacher, Jean-Luc Bubert, had never hit him.

"He lied," Francis Les, a lawyer for Bubert's family told a press conference on Friday.

In a statement the public prosecutor of the northern French town of Laon, Olivier Hussenet, confirmed that the boy had admitted that he had never been hit.

"The teacher neither raised his hand to the boy nor hit him," he said in a statement. "And after medical examinations it was clear that there was no evidence that the boy had suffered a broken tooth."

You might remember the story. In September, Bubert, a teacher at the César-Savart secondary school in Saint-Michel near Laon, was taken in for several hour's worth of questioning after the parents of the pupil made an official complaint.

The boy had maintained that the 39-year-old science teacher had kept him back at the end of class and hit him during a heated exchange of words.

Bubert was eventually released because as far as the police had been concerned there didn't seem to be enough evidence to back up the claim.

But after almost a full day of questioning he went home and hanged himself.

At the time Hussenet, said that it had been one person's word against another's and that there had been no witnesses to the alleged incident.

He insisted said there had been no direct link between Bubert's detention and his later suicide, offering the more likely explanation that a combination of personal factors had been involved as Bubert had been going through a messy divorce.

"The detention and questioning by the police could have been the trigger that led him to take his life."

But in the intervening period since Bubert's death and the boy's admission not only had reservations been circulating about the veracity of the original claims, but also the role of the police, with the father of the teacher asking for access to files to prove his son's innocence.

As the mayor of the village in which Bubert lived told French television, the whole case highlighted the problem of how you assess the credibility of a child's accusations in relation to the reputation of a teacher.

"In France we have to find some sort of balance between the accusations a child makes and the presumption of innocence of someone until they're proven guilty," said Thierry Verdavaine.

"Unfortunately we have the tendency to go from one extreme to the other.

And that's a matter that concerns Bubert's former colleagues, and probably many others within the profession.

"On a purely human level of course we have lost a co-worker and it was an enormous waste of a life," said Alain Dambron, - a maths teacher at the school.

"It's also something that could happen to any of us, to be accused of something similar at any time. I know that under similar circumstances I would also find myself alone," he added.

So who's to blame for a man having taken his own life?

Was it the fault of the 15-year-old who made the false accusations, or more likely as Bubert's father seemed to imply a number of factors including a system that encourages the readiness of the police to accept a story based on little evidence without looking first to protect the innocence of his son.

"Justice had its own part to play in the way in which it went about investigating the case of Jean-Luc," he said.

The responsibility of the boy is of course enormous, but simply to burden him with complete and total blame for the affair would be also be wrong", he added.

The boy has since changed schools, but will face prosecution for making false accusations.

Family of teacher who hanged himself speaks out

This is the follow-up to a story reported here on a couple of weeks ago.

For the first time the father of Jean-Luc Bubert has broken his silence and spoken to the French media.

Bubert was the teacher who hanged himself last month shortly following his release from police custody, during which he had been questioned over allegations that he had hit one of his pupils.

On Friday his father, Jean Bubert, said the reasons that had led to his son's suicide needed to be fully investigated and he called on the local public prosecutor to allow the family's lawyer access to police files.

"My son has left us," he said at a press conference. "But the truth and his honour need to be re-established."

The case centres on the death of Jean-Luc Bubert, a science teacher at the César-Savart secondary school in Saint-Michel near the northern French town of Laon.

On the morning of September 18 he was taken in for questioning by police after the parents of one his pupils made an official complaint against him.

Their 15-year-old son alleged that Bubert had asked him to remain in the classroom at the end of the lesson, and reprimanded him for having turned up late. At some point during the discussion the boy claimed that his teacher had hit him.

During police questioning Bubert denied the accusation and was released, with the local public prosecutor, Olivier Hussenet, later saying that as far as the police had been concerned there were insufficient grounds to press charges.

The alleged incident had occurred in a classroom and there had been no witnesses present.

After his release, the 38-year-old returned home and hanged himself. His body was discovered the following morning.

In an interview with the regional newspaper following the teacher's suicide, Hussenet said that although the detention and questioning by the police might have prompted Bubert to take his life, there had also been number of personal factors involved which could have played a role.

The teacher had been going through a divorce and his house had been put up for sale.

But for Jean Bubert, the preliminary investigations surrounding the reasons for his son's suicide are insufficient, and he wants access to police records and for a full enquiry into the circumstances leading up to his son's death to be launched.

He also remains convinced of his son's innocence of the accusations made against him and maintains that another pupil has since confirmed that the boy who made the claims showed no physical signs of having been hit immediately after the alleged confrontation.

Furthermore, he wants the good name of his son to be restored.

"I'm asking for the truth on behalf his eight-year-old son, who now has to continue his life without his father," he said.

"A father who is no longer alive, and whose reputation has been tarnished - without doubt," he added.

Not quite a French "Cold Case" - but almost

One of the most watched programmes on French television at the moment is the US import "Cold Case" in which each week Detective Lilly Rush (played by Kathryn Morris) reopens an investigation into a previously unsolved murder.

Perhaps events over the past couple of days here in France could do with a little of that "fictional" help if the truth behind what actually happened in the following tale is ever to surface.

For sure there was no homicide involved, but it resulted in a death nonetheless. And there are questions and issues that remain unanswered and unresolved.

The events concern what did or perhaps did not happen between a teacher and a pupil at the César-Savart secondary school in Saint-Michel near the northern French town of Laon, last week.

The science teacher was taken in for questioning by police after the parents of a 15-year-old boy made an official complaint.

The boy reportedly had told his father that the teacher had asked him to remain in the classroom at the end of the lesson, and reprimanded him for having turned up late. And at some point during the discussion the boy alleged that the 38-year-old man turned around and hit him.

When detained the teacher denied the charges and according to the public prosecutor of Laon, Olivier Hussenet, as far as the police were concerned there didn't appear to have been enough evidence to press charges.

"The alleged incident was in a classroom," he said. "There were no witnesses and it was one person's word against another's."

That might have been the end of the media interest in the case, had the 38-year-old not hanged himself a day later.

He left a letter but one which contained no mention of why he had decided to take his life.

And Hussenet insists there didn't appear to be a direct connection between the alleged charges, the police investigation and the man's suicide.

Instead he offers the possible explanation that it was a combination of personal factors involved.

"His house had been put up for sale and he was going through a divorce," Hussenet told a local newspaper. "The detention and questioning by the police could have been the trigger that led him to take his life."

But for the regional branch of the national teachers' union, Snes-FSU, accusations - whose veracity was unproven - had been made that would inevitably have had an impact on the teacher's reputation.

In an official statement it questioned whether the investigations by the police had been disproportionate to the allegations made.

"It illustrates a deterioration of the situation in which all teachers find themselves on a daily basis," the statement said. "Their numbers are not sufficient and they are sometimes not qualified to deal with the problems they face."

This latest case is not an isolated one of course and highlights problems that have received a fair amount of media coverage in France this year - namely discipline in schools and how or whether teachers should react when provoked. And just as importantly how the police handle claims of force used by teachers against pupils.

In August José Laboureur, a 49-year-old technology teacher from Berlaimont in the north of France, was fined €500 for having slapped an 11-year-old boy.

The incident happened back in January when Laboureur lost his temper after the boy insulted him during a lesson.

There was no disciplinary action taken against the teacher at the time, but the boy's father - a policeman - pressed charges.

The boy was suspended for three days but Laboureur had to wait months for the case to come to court, with parents of children at the school and teachers gathering more than 60,000 signatures in support of the teacher, who many thought had been provoked by a boy looking for confrontation.

The case raised questions as to whether the incident had been taken more seriously by police because the charges had been brought by one of their colleagues.

It also caused the education minister, Xavier Darcos, to step in remarking that the boy had not been suitably punished.

"Without defending the teacher's actions," he said "in a great majority of cases it's often the teachers who are the victims."

"They should not be insulted in public."

Whether the 15-year-old boy in last week's incident was telling the truth may never be known.

He's sticking by his story and his father is backing his version of events.

Interviewed on national radio on Saturday, the boy's father said although he regretted having made the decision to make a complaint, he still felt he was within his rights to have done so.

"He shouldn't have done what he did," he said. "We don't hit children, and that's that," he added.