VIDEO CHRONICLE. Where does the right to information stop? Can we talk about everything, including the president’s private life? The question arises again with the release of the book An (almost) perfect couple by “Paris Match” journalist Florian Tardif.
Moment of solitude, definition: having been a political journalist for several years already and finding yourself commenting on the arrival into this world of the “Dauphin” of France, or rather the dauphine, not far from the Muette clinic in Paris (16th), as in the finest hours of the monarchy. We were there. It was October 19, 2011, when the very first Élysée baby was born, Giulia Sarkozy, whose father already held the title of first president to be divorced and remarried during the exercise of his mandate under the Fifth Republic.
“Peopoleries”, we could do without them, thank you. How many times have we heard this question: do we have the right to talk about everything, including the private life of the President of the Republic and political leaders? Doesn’t the right to information stop, decency requires, at the entrance to the private apartments of the Élysée? Can we imagine, in short, General de Gaulle opening wide the doors of his bedroom, to paraphrase the famous expression of François Fillon?
Contract with the French
The question regained all its relevance with the publication of the book by the journalist Paris Match Florian Tardif, An (almost) perfect couple at Albin Michel, who attributes to the head of state a platonic flirtation with the Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani. Let’s say it straight away: we learn a thousand times more in this work, served by an airy and subtle pen, about Jupiter’s more timid and tormented temperament than we imagine and about the preponderant political influence of his wife.
Yes, Emmanuel Macron doubts, and not just a little. Was it therefore necessary to go rummaging through his private affairs, under the pretext of the unusual images of the first lady inflicting a slap on him in May 2025 – slap, rebuff, describe the gesture according to your taste – in the presidential plane just landed on the tarmac in Hanoi, Vietnam? The private lives of public officials, fortunately, are legally protected.
Everything is therefore a matter of contract concluded with the French. A politician who campaigns on family and conservative values would thus expose himself to criticism if he lied to voters about his own conduct. Likewise, an elected official who uses his personal life to turn it into an electoral marketing tool runs the risk of it being exposed, despite himself.
Red lines
In 2016, it is clear that Emmanuel Macron entered the hearts of the French by posting on the front page of Paris Match his unusual romance with his former French teacher, twenty-four years older than him, with the help of Mimi Marchand. On the contrary, we remember Édouard Philippe who, upon arriving at Matignon in 2017, had indicated that he intended for his private life to remain private and always set a tight border between his personal life with his wife Édith Chabre and his political activity. And never had to suffer from seeing his private life exposed against his will.
The question arises all the more acutely if public funds are involved. However, the first lady has a cabinet and collaborators. Small arrangements with the truth are even less tolerated, especially in times of budgetary scarcity. There is no need to return to the croissant episode under François Hollande, when the former president appeared as a couple with Valérie Trierweiler and maintained a relationship with the actress Julie Gayet.
Fortunately, there remain intangible red lines. A rumor, to begin with, is in no way information. If the media editorial offices are constantly buzzing with rumors about the private lives of public officials, that does not mean that they are found in articles. The facts, just the facts. And there again, everything is a matter of proportionality: there must still have been a breach of the moral contract made with the French, that the affair impacts the public action of the person concerned or that public money be involved. Because everyone does rigorously what they want, as long as they remain within the confines of legality, and we are neither voyeurs nor censors.
Case of conscience
Finally, let us admit to this work on the Macrons a case of conscience. Does the fact that a political leader displays his private life at a moment’s notice grant a right to investigate the subject for life? Certainly, in our French imagination, the presidential couple occupies a special place. “They looked for it”we hear. But is a candidate’s spouse eternally accountable for his or her spouse’s communication choices, even if he or she validates them?
To put it more clearly, should Brigitte Macron suffer ad nauseam to see her privacy exposed because she actively participated ten years ago in the political rise of her husband? Has she not already suffered a lot, violently attacked on her age, her physique, even on her very identity as a woman?
In political circles, everyone knows that the first lady was hardly delighted with this second five-year term, which she did not want, to the point of having gradually withdrawn. Sadly lucid about the fact, as Claude Pompidou said, that the Élysée is for its illustrious occupants “the house of misfortune”. The right to the truth yes, in well-regulated circumstances, relentlessness no.
