Sexist comments, “Yucky jokes”, “boy’s club culture”… In the documentary I’m not a bitch, I’m a journalist, by Marie Portolano, broadcast Sunday March 21 on Canal +, more than twenty sports journalists testify to the difficulty of being a woman in this still very masculine environment.
But viewers haven’t seen it all. The site Days reported Sunday evening that part of the documentary, implicating the star columnist Pierre Ménès, had been cut before the broadcast. “As soon as the idea for the documentary was submitted to it, the management of Canal + knew that the sequence with Pierre Ménès would appear in it. But once the documentary has been shot (…) under the aegis of Gérald-Brice Viret, director of antennas, sports director Thierry Cheleman (…), and his assistant Didier Lahaye demand from the authors that all the sequences with Ménès be cut. The decision is made to keep in the documentary only the testimonies of women ”, write journalists Raphaël Garrigos and Isabelle Roberts.
Skirt lifted and unsolicited fuck
Among the passages where Pierre Ménès is implicated is the scene of August 28, 2016 on the set of the “Canal Football Club” during which, off the air but facing the audience in the studio, he lifts Marie Portolano’s skirt and grabs her buttocks. In another video from 2011 – for the hundredth of the “Canal Football Club” -, he approaches journalist Isabelle Moreau, a bouquet in hand, hands her the flowers and, by surprise, kisses her for a long time on the mouth. . When Marie Portolano shows these images to Isabelle Moreau, the journalist bursts into tears.
In the uncensored version of the documentary, when he is confronted with these images, Pierre Ménès loses his temper, believing that Isabelle Moreau is reacting “In the light of #Metoo, of today’s society” ; he also says that he does not remember the attack against Marie Portolano, that he does not understand why she felt humiliated.
Contacted by Days the management of Canal + refused to comment, while Pierre Ménès replied: “I have nothing to say. I am under the orders of my direction, me. Me, if my management has nothing to say, I have nothing to say either. Especially if it’s to accuse me of bullshit and shit. If your paper is to say shit and relay bullshit, I’m not interested. “
Marie Portolano has decided to leave Canal +, where she had served for seven years, to join M6 and present entertainment programs there. Since the documentary was broadcast, the keywords #balancetonporc and #PierreMenesOut have multiplied on social networks. Another video circulated again after this revelation, in which Pierre Ménès kisses the singer and columnist Francesca Antoniotti in the program “Touche pas à mon sport” in 2016.