In less than a month, the color purple will appear again in the streets and on social networks with the hash word #NousToutes as the banner of the fight against gender-based and sexual violence. However, it is not necessary to wait until November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to see how it continues to prevail. No need to experience filing a rape complaint at a police station to verify it. However, just as underestimating what women say when they speak is unbearable, refusing to understand why they sometimes hold back their words is like giving them an additional injunction.
The return of the “Hulot affair”
This evidence is Jean-Michel Aphatie who encourages us to recall it. At the option of television sets and radio studios that he frequents during the promotion of his latest work, The Amateurs (Flammarion, 280 pages, 19 euros), the editorialist is moved by the political and media indifference which welcomed the testimony of women who would have suffered from the behavior of Nicolas Hulot. Three and a half years ago, on February 9, 2018, the ephemeral magazine Ebdo revealed that the Minister for the Ecological and Solidarity Transition had been the subject of a complaint for rape in July 2008. Closed for prescription, it had been filed by a woman who only asked to remain anonymous.
“We cannot say, in the wake of #metoo, that we must be attentive to the words of women who suffer from the violence that, sometimes, men commit (…), and when a case arises, close your eyes ”, writes the journalist in his book. We cannot prove him wrong. Except that by saying this, he suggests that the media have remained indifferent to the damning claims the popular minister, and preferred to avoid investigating him. Which is not the general case.
It is not enough to hand a microphone to those who have endured inappropriate behavior for their speech to be freed.
Long before Ebdo, editorial staff carried out investigations, without any article appearing. Why ? “In this kind of case, we know that we can work for months and not publish anything as long as we consider that we do not have enough elements”, confide Emeline Cazi and Sylvia Zappi, who investigated the subject for The world. “We only answer for what we publish”, in turn opposes Lénaïg Bredoux, journalist and editorial manager for gender issues, to Mediapart. Any other course of action would amount to giving free rein to rumors, in defiance of the facts. “We do not have to force the testimonies”, insists for his part the journalist of France Televisions Elise Lucet, who has been investigating the subject for four years. “We do it with respect for the word of women, the presumption of innocence, and the necessary work of verifying the facts”, she recalls. So many very time-consuming steps but essential under penalty, as was the case in this case, to cause a fiasco.
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