In the e-mail inbox today came an invitation to endorse a committee of support for the African woman Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of attempting to rape. It was from the French writer, historian and staunch anti-discrimination campaigner Claude Ribbe (above), whom I met when living in Paris.
The entirely mischievous headline he has used at his blog reads: "Je ne suis pas raciste. La preuve? Je viole même des négresses." No translation really needed.
Ribbe does believe in the presumption of innocence. He is more concerned with the reaction in France to events in New York, the minimisation of the woman's complaints by some commentators - "no one died", said the former minister Jack Lang, attacking the initial denial of bail; "messing around with a servant", said Jean-François Kahn before he thought better of it - and the kneejerk claims of conspiracy.
For some years, I have held the view that the French press is essentially more decent than its British equivalent while also being a good deal more dull.
The thought, as I have explained before, first occurred during a conversation with François Dufour, editor and co-founder of the Playbac group that publishes excellent newspapers for children: Petit Quotidien (for 6-9 year olds) Mon Quotidien (10-13) and L'Actu (14+). I am not sure either of us remembers who said it first.
Dufour also speaks for French daily newspapers as a council member of the World Association of Newspapers and has often expressed dim views of French journalistic standards. My confrères and consœurs will not wish to look at the last page of his book of Les journalistes français sont-ils si mauvais? (Are French journalists so bad?), where he answers his own question.
And that question, of course, is one that been asked a lot since DSK's arrest in New York.
For, as we now know only too clearly, DSK has previous. That is not to say that he is a convicted rapist or attempted rapist, just that there are women out there who feel his behaviour towards them has been, to say the least, pushy to the point of harassment. One says he molested her when she went to interview him in connection with a book she was writing when she was in her early 20s, he his early 50s.
None of this has been proved, of course. But is also clear, as I have reported, today and last week, for The National, Abu Dhabi, that the allegations of misconduct were an open secret in Parisian media and political circles.
Sarko, no shrinking violet, apparently warned him to watch his step when he took the IMF job, the implication being that the Americans were more puritannical about sex and would take his conduct more seriously. It does not appear to have stopped DSK embarking within weeks on an affair with an IMF subordinate, but he got away with that one.
The whispers remained whispers, shared by an elite few, because that is the way things are done in France. Even when occasional writers brought them to public notice, it was a blog posting here, an overlooked chapter of a book there, barely followed up. Yet the moment DSK was arrested, the stream of information about DSK's alleged past began to flow.
Some say things will never be the same again, that France will be come more open, its press more robust. And some would regret the passing of this French code of silence. François Dufour, for all his complaints about the shortcomings of French journalism, fervently hopes things do remain unchanged in that respect. He says, in short, that it is simply not the journalist's job to breach the privacy of others; information suggesting criminal behaviour, he believes, should simply be reported to the police.
I make a clear distinction between what people get up to in their private lives and what they do that may compromise the exercise of their duties as public figures, especially if what they do involves the coercion of others.
But another more imemediate aspect of French coverage worries me greatly. The woman at the centre of the allegations against DSK has been identified, and her full address given, in French reports. Never too late to get stuck into murky sex scandals? It started, I think, with Le Nouvel Observateur, and is now commonplace (I heard it on France Info and Claude Ribbe's committee of support puts the name in its title).
This is completely contrary to UK practice, a practice legally enforced, and I suspect it is also against US and Canadian practice. There is, I know, a case for protecting the identity of the accused, too, until there is a conviction but that is a quite separate argument.
The French media have simply taken it upon themselves to name her. My friend Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian's Paris correspondent, tried to raise this on a France 3 debate in which she was allowed very little opportunity to interrupt all the male guests. She was quickly brushed aside on the pretext, unfulfilled, of new information coming from the NYC bail hearing.
Maybe the identification of the victime presumée is not shocking as I suppose. I sent a quick text to François Dufour to ask what he thought. "Not sure," came the reply, "need to think about it." But I know what I think. Until I hear that the woman concerned has consented, albeit by default, to her name being published, it will not appear here (and any comment that includes it will be edited as soon as I am able to do so).
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