Outrage over judge’s gagging order against Mediapart investigation

TheThe gagging order handed by a Paris judge to prevent Mediapart from publishing a report on a political scandal of national public interest has been met with outrage among fellow journalists, the legal profession, rights groups and members of both houses of the French parliament.

The reactions follow the move by a Paris judicial court judge who, on November 18th, ordered Mediapart not to publish new revelations about the practices, which have included blackmail over a 'sex tape', employed by Gaël Perdriau, mayor of the south-east French town of Saint-Étienne, and his allies, amid political infighting.

The judge’s ruling followed a request for the injuction submitted that same day to the magistrate by Perdriau’s lawyer. The magistrate's decision came after a meeting between her and the lawyer, to which Mediapart was not invited, and about which it was not even informed, riding roughshod over the principle of a due hearing of the opposing arguments of both parties.

“In a democracy and a constitutional state worthy of the name, it is incomprehensible that censorship procedures, issued before publication and with no due hearing of the parties, can be used against the press,” read a statement  released on Tuesday evening that was signed by all the parties that make up the broad leftwing and Green party parliamentary alliance, the NUPES.

On Tuesday morning, centre-right senator Nathalie Goulet formally submitted a proposal for legislative reform that would outlaw such injunctions issued on request and without hearing opposing arguments when they concern the press. Her proposed change to the law was given the support of her centre-right colleague Laurent Lafon, who presides the Senate’s culture committee.

Goulet’s reform would exclude press organisations from the articles of the civil law code which were used for the gagging order against Mediapart. Specifically, Goulet’s proposal is to add an article to France’s July 29th 1881 law that governs the freedom of the press, and which would read: “A publication cannot be banned other than by a judicial decision rendered after due hearing of [all] the parties”.

That would ensure that journalists would be protected from the issuing of a requested injunction made after hearing the argument of that one party alone, which is a practice allowed in French commercial courts. “It’s a very usual procedure but, in this particular case, applied to the domain of the press, it leads to an absurdity,” Goulet, a trained lawyer, told Mediapart. She said “an explosive cocktail” is made from combining the criteria for such rulings without due hearing of all the parties and the resulting violation of the freedom of the press. “It is a totally disproportionate violation of the freedom of the press,” she added. “There must, very simply, be a ban on this type of procedure in matters of the press. It will provide jurisprudence.”

Her move also has the support of Soumya Bourouaha, a Communist Party Member of Parliament (MP) who sits in the National Assembly, the more powerful lower house. “If a legislative clarification must be made in order that the fundamental right to information is not impeded, then well go along with it,” she said. “While, as a lawmaker, it is necessary to always be cautious when one gives an opinion on a particular legal ruling, it is my responsibility to ensure that the freedom of the press is guaranteed, and that journalistic work suffers no constraint.”

Widespread messages of support

In the particular case of the gagging order against Mediapart, Bourouaha offered her support to its editorial team, as have since Monday others among her parliamentary colleagues on social media, including Green MP Sophie Taillé-Polian, the head of the Socialist Party group of MPs in the National Assembly, Boris Vallaud, and radical-left La France Insoumise party MP Clémentine Autain.

The gagging order also prompted an outcry from the French association of lawyers specialised in law governing the press (l’Association des avocats praticiens du droit de la presse), which in a statement issued on Monday (see below) said: “Never in judicial memory has such a preventive ban on a press publication, which amounts to a measure of pure and simple censorship in advance, been pronounced by a magistrate.”

Numerous bodies representing French journalists also voiced their indignation at the injunction, including journalists’ unions, the SNJ, SNJ-CGT, and the CFDT. More than 35 in-house staff journalists’ committees, SDJs, gave their support to Mediapart, including those from the dailies Le Monde and Libération, and magazines Marianne and Télérama, and also broadcasters BFMTV and TF1. Adding to that outspoken support was the International Federation of Journalists, whose worldwide membership is spread over almost 140 countries.

In a joint statement published on Mediapart on Tuesday, 36 staff journalist committees, 17 associations defending the right to information, and several journalistic collective groups denounced “a serious and flagrant attack on the freedom of the press”, adding: “This liberticidal act profoundly worries us about the situation of the freedom of the press in France.

French news and features website Les Jours has proposed that it and other media could publish the censored report in the event that the judge’s ruling, which Mediapart is taking legal steps to overturn, is upheld, underlining that the injunction targets Mediapart alone. That move was relayed on by the editorial directors of Libération and Politis, by the director of left-leaning daily L’Humanité, by the co-founder of right-leaning news and current affairs website Atlantico, and by Mediapart’s editorial partner Mediacités, an online network of regional news and investigations.

For Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders), a Paris-based NGO for the defence of press rights and freedom of information, the injunction is “a dangerous and flagrant circumventing of the July 29th 1891 law that protects the freedom of the press”. The French association for the defence of whistleblowers, La Maison des lanceurs d’alerte, and the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International also leant their support to Mediapart.

Meanwhile, the association of the independent online news-reporting press, the SPIIL, said it deplored “a dangerous attack against the freedom of expression and the freedom to inform”, and underlined that legislators “must ensure that commercial law cannot be used to censor journalists”.

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Mediapart held a press conference at its Paris offices on Tuesday afternoon about the events surrounding the gagging order, which can be followed in the video (in French) below. Those appearing (left to right of screen) are Antton Rouget, the reporter whose investigation has been censored, Edwy Plenel, Mediapart's publishing editor, Carine Fouteau, co-editor in chief of Mediapart, and Fabrice Arfi, co-editor of Mediapart's investigations team.

• The original French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse

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