There is a burlesque, or tragic, story, depending on who you ask, that the newspaper Libération has just experienced. In a nutshell, part of the newspaper’s editorial team cannot tolerate the remarks of one of its most renowned writers, Jean Quatremer, a prominent specialist in European current affairs. This veteran of the print press, with 40 years at Libération, is a free, brilliant spirit with a major flaw: he “suffers” his colleagues with his independent positions, not always aligning with the political stance his younger colleagues consider too right-wing or only social-democratic. The latter are calling for his head and are even resorting to a witch hunt.
Are you suffering? Yes, you heard correctly. This is where things get complicated. How can one claim to be a victim of a contrary opinion? Poor things, suffering so! Are we witnessing the famous debate about an “opinion that hurts,” often found in heated discussions around Islam and blasphemy?
The accusers, to justify this absurd pillorying, argue that “freedom of expression is not absolute,” and that it cannot be “the Trojan horse of racism, discrimination, and hate, based on religion or origin, sexism, and homophobia.” Quite a claim. Is Quatremer an agent of a fifth column infiltrating the journal of Serge July? Wow, better alert the political police before the disaster.
Hysteric Battles
Behind this tirade straight out of the Lfiste dictionary, appears the disturbing question that must challenge the entire press. One year away from the presidential election, the country has never experienced such intense tensions, as well as such radical, hysterical ideological battles. The billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s offensive in the press, publishing, and television with CNews, turning journalists into increasingly uninhibited militants in the service of an extreme right-wing project, is a challenge for all those who believe in freedom of information.
By extension, should all those who claim to stand for independent journalism allow themselves to be drawn into this sectarian drift that currently contaminates Libération? The Quatremer affair is a case to watch closely. Declaring oneself a victim of a thought different from one’s own, making it a lawsuit, regardless of its nature, evokes dark times, lettres de cachet, imprisonments for deviationism, the Guépéou and its sinister methods against opponents.
“Forbidden to Forbid”
Looking closer at home, just take a moment to consider the Chavista practices in Venezuela or the expedited trials in the mullahs’ Iran, to understand the slippery slope that some could slide down. Libération is founded on the slogan “It is forbidden to forbid.” It has experienced much darker periods in the past. Particularly in the early 1980s when journalists, still imbued with a flimsy Maoism, engaged in self-criticism in general assemblies, repenting before their judges.
Fortunately, today we are not in that place. But it would be wise to avoid putting the “deviant” in a symbolic dungeon, to keep them from the morbid trap of ideological vendetta. Is there a debate within the left-wing newspaper about different political lines? Isn’t that a fantastic piece of news? Must we then excommunicate Quatremer the Mischievous, so appreciated by the viewers of LCI? What if we simply left him alone?
