Emmanuel Macron had been elected for 11 days when the press first protested, reports the New Statesman.
The new French president was heading to Mali for his first diplomatic visit, and his press office announced they would start choosing the journalists who would be allowed to cover it. This did not go down well.
“Mr President, it is not up to the Elysée to choose its journalists,” was the headline of an open letter signed by a dozen journalists’ unions from France’s most prominent media outlets, including Le Monde, Liberation, Le Figaro, public radio and TV, and the organisation Reporters Without Borders. “None of your predecessors have used such a system,” the editorial read. “As defiance is weighing more and more on information, choosing the journalist who will report on your trips adds to confusion between communication and journalism, and harms democracy.”
According to the Elysée, the number of accredited journalists on the Mali trip – lower than normal – was due to security reasons (Mali has been engulfed in armed conflict since 2012). “We cannot organise a trip to Mali, especially in such short notice, with the military context and the risks, in improvised conditions,” said the government’s spokesman, Christophe Castaner. “We will give our preference for each trip, based by reporting beats.”
He added that the president wishes to have the “liberty of exchange with the French people” during trips, which a group of dozens of journalists and cameras could hamper. Macron’s press office later added: “Worried journalists can rest: the Elysée does not plan to do the newsrooms’ job.”
But a month later, in June, an editorial in Le Monde newspaper called for vigilance again. “Does the new executive power have a problem with freedom of the press?” it asked, listing “extremely worrying signs” of the government’s “conception of media’s independence and source protection”.