INTERVIEW
"He was the master of the investigation, he taught a whole generation an ethics, a vision, a rigor, a humility and a height of vision." Guest of the Great evening newspaper, Friday on Europe 1, the investigator and director Christophe Nick paid a tribute to his friend and collaborator Pierre Péan, who died Thursday at the age of 81 years.
"Try to understand without ever judging"
Past troubled Mitterrand, diamonds Bokassa ... Pierre Péan was distinguished by his investigations, he refused to qualify investigations. "It's a police term," says Christophe Nick. "It's about finding the culprits, you practice your job by tracking someone down, up to peeling bills of expense ... It was the absolute opposite of his conception of journalism, which was instead try to understand without ever judging. "
Far from a Manichean vision of the profession, "there were only gray areas with Pierre," says the director. "He had a crazy love for the scoop, to find a paper, to find the text at the bottom of an improbable archive with the stamp, the signature, the authentication ... But never to overwhelm, never to condemn."
"The pack effect, the relentlessness, he hated it"
A conception sometimes at odds with the contemporary exercise of the profession, recognizes Christophe Nick. "He was crazy, he dared not even call himself a journalist, he was a writer, and he could only find his happiness by making books or documentaries," says his friend. "He loved the news, the news, but not that kind of immediacy, (the fact) of nailing him to the pillory.We learn a case and it must be resolved: why he is not in prison? and why he did not resign? The pack effect, the relentlessness, the designation of individuals as culprits or targets he hated that. "
And Christophe Nick to quote the example of the treatment of the case of the frigates of Taiwan by the newspaper Le Monde - on which Pierre Pean published a book with Philippe Cohen, The hidden face of the World - in the 1980s. remember that (...) in Le Monde (this case) had become the case Roland Dumas (former Minister of Foreign Affairs, ed ), and that every two days there was an article in the front page of the World on Roland Dumas .... You understand something to the frigates of Taiwan, you? "
"There were two absolute conceptions in our profession"
Asked about Edwy Plenel, the founder of Mediapart and former editorial director of the World, Christophe Nick evokes a "historic enemy". "There were two absolute conceptions in our business and we all know it, there was the Pean design and the Plenel design, the Péan design is the investigation, the Plenel design is the investigation. is trying to understand, the other is to accuse. "