Books by journalists on politics or with politicians appeared timidly after the Second World War and benefited from the individualization of political life, on the one hand, and from the place given to the President of the Republic after 1965, on the other hand. ‘somewhere else. Parliamentary life having considerably weakened with the Fifth Republic, politicians suddenly took on the spotlight. The appearance and generalization of opinion polls in the 1970s helped, the population demanded to know them better, journalists became signatures, publishing rushed into them, the journalist-politician couple became shape.
Since then, each year has brought its uninterrupted flow of books of interviews with politicians, books on the behind the scenes of the political world, books written in place of politicians, biographies, memoirs of journalists who have lived as close as possible to politicians. In short, here is a thwarted but resistant cohabitation, that of the journalist-politician couple, which has a history, successes and failures but which is neither exceptional nor unprecedented. Why, then, was journalist Jean-François Achilli so quickly fired by Radio France?
Let’s recap. On March 13, The world publishes an article claiming that the journalist Jean-François Achilli would have “worked in the shadows, providing Bardella with his memories, thus allowing the beginning of a book to see the light of day” – without a designated editor. In the same article, Jean-François Achilli argues that he “did not sign a writing contract for Jordan Bardella’s book”. Did the journalist graciously offer wise advice to the politician? For the moment, in any case: no contract; no book; no substantiated details. But the publication of the article was enough to cause a fever at the Maison de la Radio. Jean-François Achilli is banned from the air, summoned, ordered to justify himself. The politician and the journalist deny and recriminate, whatever! We must remove the already guilty.
What to do with the RN?
This non-affair is part of a moment of temptation and, let’s say it, of moral panic. The temptation first: that of censoring in the name of Good – besides, have we ever censored in the name of Evil? And Reporters Without Borders has referred the matter to the Council of State for “failures” by CNews in terms of plurality, just as the LFI sketch from the parliamentary commission on the allocation of DTT frequencies proves it. Afterwards. Even if Achilli is “a priori” not guilty of anything, is it the moral panic faced with the inexorable rise of the extreme right which caused this absurd sequence leading from the publication of an article to the banning of antenna of a journalist? And, above all, the comfortable installation of the RN in the political landscape, the fruit of its continued normalization? Victories for the populist right in the Western world? But do we have no other weapons at our disposal than that of moral censorship? Are we so deprived of political and intellectual proposals? Do we only have to oppose the extreme right with the moral prohibition?
We must believe so and this is indeed the drama which is agitating the press. Press which fails to accept a reality: 42% of voters cast a ballot for Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election, and Jordan Bardella exceeds 30% of voting intentions in the polls for the European elections. If all the prominent political journalists in France and Navarre signed books on or with politicians, the FN remained a comfortable scarecrow, Jean-Marie Le Pen was only approached for investigations proving to what extent he was a dangerous bastard in the past, in the present and for the future.
But the RN reshuffles the cards by convincing French citizens, by having come out of the protest vote, by aligning more than 80 deputies in the Assembly. “What to do with the RN?” could be the cry of despair uttered by the journalists of World and the management of the Maison de la Radio – which is a public institution and which has the duty to speak to all citizens, even those who do not vote like it. What to do with the RN? What can we do with a right-wing populist party, other than look it in the eye, without panic, without fear, and speak to its voters without taking them for plague victims or idiots?
Abnousse Shalmani, committed against the obsession with identity, is a writer and journalist
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