With the release of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn from house arrest in New York, it seems that the soul-searching that had descended on French media over giving the influential a pass on their personal behavior has almost completely reversed itself. For Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, columnist Olivier Picard laments that when it comes to being neutral observers of events, French journalists have a long way to go.
For Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, Olivier Picard writes in part:
By giving the floor almost exclusively to friends of DSK, France 2’s 20 hours mutilated the news. If you were watching, you might have believed that an acquittal had already been handed down! Never mind that at the same time, the channel felt no embarrassment replaying the painful sequence of a handcuffed DSK, in contempt of all the proclaimed ethics of French media.
If the loyalty of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s friends – who are suddenly so much more numerous – is estimable, their certainty is disturbing. It’s as if they would now deny Nafissatou Diallo the right to complain because she lied. As if the irreproachable young woman who was so spontaneously defended a month and a half ago by Sofitel management and her Bronx neighbors had never been anything but an odious manipulator. And now they even mock feminists, necessarily enraged, who took up her cause!
And now, why shouldn’t DSK return to the presidential primary race when he should be, according to the evidence, disqualified? By almost completely eliminating the distance that we reporters must always force ourselves to maintain in relation to events, this guilty excitement causes yet more deterioration to the image of journalists.
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