Leading French daily Le Monde faced censorship allegations on Friday after deleting an opinion piece critical of President Emmanuel Macron’s stance on Algeria, despite the newspaper insisting it contained an error of interpretation.
Le Monde has issued a highly unusual personal apology to Macron for the article researcher Paul Max Morin penned after the President paid an extremely sensitive visit to the former French colony late last month.
In his article, Morin argued that a comment by Macron in Algeria about a “love story that has its tragic element” glorified the colonial past and represented a step backwards from his earlier efforts to adopt a more modern attitude towards the history of France in North Africa Country.
“Reducing colonization in Algeria to a ‘love story’ is the culmination of Macron’s shift to the right on memory,” Morin argued in the article.
But Le Monde said it later deleted the article because Morin misinterpreted the quote.
“Although it could be interpreted in different ways, the phrase ‘a love story with a tragic element’ used by Mr. Macron did not refer specifically to colonization – as written in the play – but to the long history of relations between France and Algeria,” it said .
“Le Monde apologizes to its readers and the President of the Republic,” he added.
– “Inexplicable and Inexcusable” –
However, the move was followed by a torrent of criticism, particularly from the left.
“A comment was pulled over a quote from Macron that he didn’t like,” tweeted far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon. “It’s a new low in the collapse of a newspaper that was once a landmark.”
“Harrowing censorship,” added Edwy Plenel, a former editor-in-chief of Le Monde who later founded investigative website Mediapart.
Morin himself told Liberation Daily that “pulling a piece is an abnormal and incomprehensible practice”.
“Inexplicable and inexcusable censorship by Le Monde,” tweeted leading French economist Thomas Piketty. “We can object to the piece, but we can’t delete it because the Elysee dislikes it.”
There was initially no comment from Macron’s office.
The controversy is doubly sensitive as it was Le Monde, behind closed doors in October 2021, citing comments by Macron describing Algeria’s system as “politico-military” that sparked a new crisis in relations with Algiers.
“When we make mistakes that are our fault, it’s normal to apologize to people who may have been offended, starting with our readers,” Le Monde director Jerome Fenoglio told AFP.
Macron presents himself in his speeches as a champion of the free press, but there have been episodes in the past that critics say reveal a thinner stance.
In November 2020, the Financial Times pulled out an article bitterly criticizing France’s policies in the fight against Islamist extremism. Macron followed this up with a letter to the newspaper in which he bitterly attacked the article.
