ON DECRYPT
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès arrested. It promised to be the information of the week-end, the week, the year perhaps. But she will finally have a flop. Because contrary to what announced Friday night Parisian first, then all the other editorials of France very quickly, the man arrested in Glasgow by the Scottish police was not the most wanted man in France for eight years . The Parisian and others have made their mea culpa since. On Monday morning, Stéphane Albouy, director of the Parisian newsroom, came to tell how sources, usually extremely reliable and cautious, misled the newspaper.
"A source is not someone who is in a state, police or judiciary control tower, and who calls us." A source is something that is built over time. years, "said the journalist by way of introduction. "Our reporters, when they have an exchange on an inquiry of this nature, this sensitivity, they have with people they know for years, they are people who follow each other, with whom trust is woven over time."
"Investigators who are extremely cautious, but then, Friday night ..."
In total, five different sources confirmed the information to the Parisian . And what has played is the certainty displayed by each one of them. "What happened on Friday night is that you have investigators who have been working on this issue for years, and who have been showing for years, because there were so many false alarms, extreme caution, "said Stéphane Albouy. "We thought we were going to find his skeleton, we thought he was in a monastery ... Each time, these people and these investigators said 'attention', but here, Friday night, for reasons that we continue to dissect and to try to understand, the same people tell us 'this is it, we have it, it's the good!' "
This is how Le Parisien , and in his wake most of the French press, was able to deliver inaccurate information to the general public. "This change of tone is something essential," insists Stéphane Albouy.