"Unacceptable methods": outrage after the ostracism of a journalist by La France Insoumise

"A serious attack on the right to inform." In a joint statement, several major editorial offices expressed their outrage at the decision of La France Insoumise to refuse access to its summer universities to a journalist from Le Monde deemed too critical. This is "a warning shot for our entire profession," write the journalists' associations (SDJ) of nearly thirty media outlets, including the national editorial team of Le Parisien, France Télévisions, LCI, M 6, Les Échos, RMC, Libération, Mediapart, and Le Monde.

Olivier Pérou, who usually covers the news of the left-wing party, has been criticized for an investigative book, co-written with Charlotte Belaïch of Libération, in which the authors criticize the functioning of the movement. Published in early May, it describes a group entirely organized around the personality of Jean-Luc Mélenchon , where intimidation and threats are commonplace.

On Thursday evening, on the website of Le Monde, the newspaper's editor, Jérôme Fenoglio, had raised "the strongest protest against this blatant restriction on press freedom and access to information." In the wake of this, LFI responded by accusing Olivier Pérou of having "heavily defamed" it in the book "La meute" and of having "invented false information" about its internal affairs.

Since then, the controversy has continued and has even grown. Alongside the SDJ text, which recalls that "exclusions of this type" have "long been the preserve of far-right groups," journalists covering LFI's summer universities in Drôme (including those from TF1-LCI, Mediapart, Libération, Le Figaro, and AFP) have denounced "unacceptable methods" and "a serious attack on press freedom."

The daily newspaper Libération announced on Friday evening that the journalist from its editorial staff accredited to this meeting organized in Drôme two days ago was leaving the premises, "as a sign of protest and support for our colleague."

"Excluding a journalist from a political event because of what he has written in the past is a dangerous precedent that we cannot trivialize (...) It is not up to the parties to choose their correspondents because the content of their articles may have displeased people," the editorial team justifies on its website.

"A party that considers itself left-wing and claims to want to fight the far right cannot use the same methods as the National Front in its time and, today, the National Rally without a strong reaction from us," he adds.