LEA SALAME. Can we still, in 2022, blame a woman journalist for her relationship with a politician? While the debate between the two presidential rounds takes place this evening and it is held to the strictest neutrality, the relationship of Léa Salamé with the left-wing MEP Raphaël Glucksmann risks attracting attention …
[Mis à jour le 20 mars 2017 à 19h47] The elections follow each other and are not alike. In 2019, journalist Léa Salamé withdrew from public broadcasting to remain in reserve for the European elections. The reason for this self-exclusion? His relationship with Raphaël Glucksmann, well-known essayist and director, son of the philosopher André Glucksmann, who then became a politician. The thinker was that year head of the list of “Place Publique” for the European ballot, a movement which he helped to found and which was then supported by the Socialist Party and the New Deal movement.
Léa Salamé followed at the time the old “Anne Sinclair case law”, which had withdrawn in the 1990s from other campaigns for her relationship with DSK. Béatrice Schönberg will also follow, willy-nilly, this path for her relationship with Jean-Louis Borloo. But already, in 2019, the practice annoys: Audrey Pulvar, former journalist herself and ex-companion of Minister Arnaud Montebourg in 2012, since reconverted into politics too, is moved that we “continue to reproach a woman for the political opinions of his companion”. The ace.
Three years later, Léa Salamé did not step back, however, for the 2022 presidential election. And no one seems to have asked her to do so. On France Inter, where she co-hosts the morning show, as on France 2, where she appears at all political evenings, the journalist has established herself as one of the faces of this campaign. So much so that she composes, with Gilles Bouleau of TF1, the duo of moderators of the debate between the two rounds this Wednesday evening, opposing Marine Le Pen to Emmanuel Macron. At the risk of being criticized for a lack of neutrality?
Léa Salamé muzzled during the debate
A second-round presidential debate is not a usual exercise for a journalist. As Léa Salamé and Gilles Bouleau have been able to recall in recent days and as their predecessors have warned, there is no question of intervening in the debate for anything other than to distribute the floor, keep to the planned timing and scroll through the themes. . The duel between two rounds does not offer the journalists present the possibility of relaunch, verification or contradiction allowed in conventional interviews. Léa Salamé would also have been preferred to the presenter of the 20 Hours of France 2, Anne-Sophie Lapix, considered too pugnacious by the two finalists of the election. But each of his interventions this evening will inevitably be dissected in the light of his habits on set or his alleged political opinions.
Léa Salamé has been in a relationship since 2016 with Raphaël Glucksmann. The two personalities gave birth to a boy named Gabriel on March 12, 2017. She had previously announced to France Inter listeners that she was taking maternity leave to better prepare for the arrival of her first child. It was his former friend from “We are not in bed” Laurent Ruquier who took the liberty of revealing the identity of the child’s father at the time, having fun seeing “love stories between interviewees and people being interviewed” happen…
That year Léa Salamé said that it was planned that she would cover the presidential campaign, but that it was her childbirth that was to prevent her from doing so: “It was not planned because it was an extremely professional year. loaded for me,” she explained.
Who is Raphaël Glucksmann, Léa Salamé’s companion?
Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, Raphaël Glucksmann studied at the Lycée Henri IV before entering the Institute of Political Studies (SciencesPo) in Paris in 1999. During his studies, he did a seven-month internship at the Algerian newspaper “Le soir d’Algérie”. In 2003, while he was still a student, he founded the association Etudes sans frontières, in the company of a dozen people and with the help of his father, in particular to allow Chechen students to come and study in Paris. He directed two documentaries a few months later, one on the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, and the other on the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Raphaël Glucksmann then directed several documentaries and books and was an unofficial advisor and French intermediary in Georgia in the 2000s. Between 2015 and 2017, he regularly appeared in media such as France Inter. He will support Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the 2017 presidential election, saying he is “proud” of his victory against the far right on the evening of the results.
Raphaël Glucksmann was elected to the European Parliament in the spring of 2019, his list obtaining 6.2% of the vote and gleaning as well as a handful of seats in the assembly in addition to his own. The choice of Raphaël Glucksmann was then presented as a bet since the Socialist Party-Public Square list, a list of “common left”, was indeed for the first time in 40 years led by a leader not from the PS. The risk of having no socialist elected to the European Parliament was also real. The “Envie d’Europe” list (PS – Public Square) had benefited from the support of several tenors including Bernard Cazeneuve, Christiane Taubira, Martine Aubry, and even François Hollande.
Raphaël Glucksmann will vote Macron against Le Pen
Since his election, Raphaël Glucksmann has repeatedly distributed the good and especially the bad points to Emmanuel Macron and has repeatedly spoken out against the far right embodied by Marine Le Pen. The war waged by Russia in Ukraine has led him to take an even stronger position on the reaction of EU governments, on the military aid provided to kyiv and on the supply of Russian gas. The MEP took part on Saturday April 16 in parades against the far right, but also in his words “against Putin, against his relays in France and in Europe, for the defense of democracy and for the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people”
Useful clarification: for this 2022 presidential election, Raphaël Glucksmann’s movement, Place Publique, had chosen not to support any candidate in the first round, but the MEP clearly indicated that iol would block Marine Le Pen by voting Macron in the second round this Sunday: “In 14 days, I will not hesitate. I will choose to block the road to the far right: Marine Le Pen must not be president of our country”, he indicated on his Instagram account. “We will then have to fight for our principles, relentlessly, to oppose when necessary, but now we just have to counter Le Pen. By voting for his opponent in the second round, Emmanuel Macron. I have a principle: whatever the candidate facing the extreme right in the second round, I will always vote for this candidate”, he summed up.
Who is Lea Salame? Express biography
Léa Salamé was born Hala Salamé, in Beirut, Lebanon in October 1979. She is the daughter of Ghassan Salamé, a Lebanese politician who was government minister in charge of Culture and then taught at Sciences Po Paris. He will also be special adviser to UN Secretary Kofi Annan. Léa Salamé’s mother, Mary Boghossian, is of Armenian origin, from a family of diamond dealers.
Léa Salamé left Lebanon for France in the early 1980s, at the age of 5, fleeing the chaos in her country with her family. She will be naturalized French at 10 years old. Attending several recognized schools and universities (Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague, École alsacienne, Panthéon-Assas, Sciences Po Paris, New York University) she embarked on a career as a journalist through her father, who allowed her to do an internship at LCP with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach.
Experiments will follow, from France 24 to France Télévisions and Radio France via I-Télé. It was her time as a regular columnist on the show “On n’est pas couche”, on France 2, from 2014 to 2016, which revealed her to the general public. Léa Salamé will gradually become a figure in the public audiovisual sector through political programs (L’Émission politique, Vous ont la parole) but also cultural ones (Stupéfiant!).