A long time ago, in 2010, Eric Zemmour was almost dismissed from Figaro. The journalist, star of a Laurent Ruquier program on France 2, had just declared on Canal +: “French people with an immigrant background are more controlled than the others because most of the traffickers are black and Arab… It is a fact. “ The then editorial director, Etienne Mougeotte, had invited him to an interview prior to dismissal, before backing down. Eric Zemmour remained within the walls, even after his conviction for incitement to racial hatred, in February 2011. Alexis Brézet, then at the head of the Figaro Magazine, had welcomed him into his team, before taking over from Mr. Mougeotte, dismissed after the failure of Nicolas Sarkozy to win a second presidential term. Almost ten years later, Alexis Brézet is still in office, Eric Zemmour is a candidate for the presidential election, and Le Figaro never ceases to compose with him.
1er December, the day after the broadcast of his campaign entry video, there were at least three signatures (Vincent Trémolet de Villers, Guillaume Tabard, Alexandre Devecchio), in the newspaper and on France Inter, to find that there was just talking. Since then, indulgent editorials have followed one another without stopping. “I would like you to take note that the entire editorial staff has not gone to the extreme right”, plead, however, a number of journalists with whom we spoke, requesting the anonymity they deem necessary in order to be able to express themselves freely.
Rather happy until then to calmly do their work in a prestigious newspaper, in accordance with the editorial line which allows all the Republican rights to coexist there, satisfied that the various editorial writers shimmer the sensibilities without privileging any, many did not think not having to set such a prerequisite one day. Corn “This kind of tolerance which is not a support but which approaches it” (in the words of one of them) towards their former colleague obsessed with immigration and Islam causes trouble. She even participated in the recent decision of at least two of them to quit the editorial office.
“We all experience, every day, being seen as working for the “Zemmour’s diary” “, regretted the National Union of Journalists (SNJ) of Figaro in an internal statement released on December 7, demanding to know whether the journalist now presidential candidate still belonged to the editorial staff. “He will not come back”, assured Alexis Brézet, Tuesday, December 14, on Franceinfo.
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