Frejus (AFP)
The National Gathering has withdrawn the accreditation that it had issued to a Libération journalist to cover his summer university in Fréjus (Var) this weekend, after the publication by the daily newspaper of a portrait of the mayor RN of the city, we learned Saturday from concordant sources.
The withdrawal of accreditation has sparked a protest from several of his fellow journalists, who have denounced on Twitter a "serious attack on freedom of the press."
When the Liberation journalist Tristan Berteloot asked the RN why his accreditation had been withdrawn, the press service of the party replied: "because of your article on the mayor of Fréjus", David Rachline, also member of the executive board (direction) of the RN, according to the reporter.
Asked by AFP on this decision, the press service of the RN (ex-FN) replied: "read the article". This one is titled: "David Racheline, from the small big thing to the big fayot".
"The RN as the FN continues to have a problem with the freedom of the press ?, reacted to AFP Paul Quinio, deputy director of the editorial staff of Libération.
The journalists of Mediapart and the daily show are no longer accredited to meetings or press conferences of the far-right party since 2012.
In April, a journalist from Mediapart was turned away from a meeting of RN Marine Le Pen's president near Rennes, on the grounds that the journalists of the news site were "+ political activists, not journalists." Mediapart denounced a far-right party "hostile to the freedom of the press".
During the 2017 presidential campaign, the journalists' societies of nearly thirty media outlets, including AFP, had signed a petition to protest against the FN's decision to "choose the media allowed to follow Marine Le Pen" and denounced " an obstacle to freedom "to inform.
In the second round of the presidential election in 2017, about 15 media outlets were banned from attending the party's election night, provoking by solidarity a "boycott" of other media.
© 2019 AFP