A not very French reaction: Kim Willsher writes:
Twenty years ago, a French president could carry on any extramarital activity in the knowledge that privacy laws and a respectful press would keep his secret. Editors and politicians colluded to ensure the public would never know. Love lives were strictly off limits to the media. The pinnacle of this self-censorship came in 1994, when Paris Matchmagazine obtained photos of Mazarine Pingeot, then aged 20, illegitimate daughter of President François Mitterrand and his lover Anne Pingeot. In a move that still astonishes the British media, Paris Matchhad sought Mitterrand’s approval before publishing the pictures.
Today, France’s privacy laws remain as draconian as ever, but the celebrity press, battling with the internet and social media, has become much less respectful. The reason is largely financial: fines for breaking the privacy laws are paltry, and soon offset by boosted sales.
In 2008, Closer, whose circulation fell from 493,000 in 2008 to 341,000 in 2012-2013, was ordered to pay €30,000 to the former first lady, Cécilia Sarkozy, after showing her in a bikini looking at a picture of her successor, Carla Bruni. Last week’s “Hollande” edition is a sellout.
