Paris (AFP)

Canal + was accused Monday of having censored a documentary on sexism in sports journalism to protect its star columnist Pierre Ménès, who expressed in the evening his "deep regrets" for his past behavior against sisters.

The passages implicating him in two cases of sexual assault were cut from the final version of the documentary, according to the site The days.

Contacted by AFP, the channel declined to comment.

One of the passages was finally broadcast in the program "Touche pas à mon poste" (TPMP), on C8 (Canal + group), which received Pierre Ménès.

The columnist tried to show contrition by expressing his "deep regrets", and by considering that "everything that (him) is accused of is intolerable in the software of 2021".

"I will never be caught doing things like that", he said, while estimating that since the emergence of the movement "#Metoo, we can not say anything, we can not do anything".

Broadcast on Sunday on Canal +, the documentary "I am not a slut, I am a journalist", by Marie Portolano, a former journalist leaving for M6, retraces more than 40 years of struggle for parity in this very masculine sector, between condescending glances, remarks on the physique, even harassment.

From Nathalie Iannetta to Clémentine Sarlat via Estelle Denis, many journalists have testified at the microphone of the co-director, herself a victim of sexual assault, according to Les Jours, on the part of Pierre Ménès.

In August 2016, at the end of a program from the "Canal Football Club", the columnist would have lifted her skirt before grabbing her buttocks, "off the air but in front of the public", affirms the online media.

Facts partly disputed by Pierre Ménès, who only admitted to having raised the skirt of the journalist.

The other case concerns his colleague Isabelle Moreau, forcibly kissed on the mouth by Pierre Ménès to "celebrate" the hundredth, in 2011, of the Canal Football Club, a scene visible on social networks.

- "Surge of hate" -

"In the initial version" of the documentary, Marie Portolano shows these images "to Isabelle Moreau on a tablet, who, seeing them again, bursts into tears".

A sequence cut at "the request of the sports direction of Canal +", says the site.

Likewise, those where Marie Portolano confronts Pierre Ménès with Isabelle Moreau's tears and her own aggression, would have been deleted, like all the interventions of male journalists.

Faced with a shower of indignant reactions on social networks, with more than 55,000 tweets affiliated with the keyword #PierreMenesOut (around 10 p.m.), the columnist changed his tone in the evening.

Calling himself the object of a "surge of hatred", he agreed that "he" may not have "stolen it".

Another video showing the columnist forcibly kissing columnist Francesca Antoniotti in the program "Touche pas à mon sport" on D8 (ex C8), in 2016, was exhumed.

Invited Monday evening on the set of TPMP alongside Pierre Ménès, the columnist explained that she experienced this moment "as a humiliation", more than as a sexual assault.

After the replay of the sequence in question, Pierre Ménès admitted that "these images are scandalous".

"Kissing someone by force / by surprise, him + grabbing the buttocks + ... on a TV set, in transport, at work, whatever the context, it is a sexual assault punishable by law ", tweeted Monday Camille Chaize on his account of spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior.

For her part, the Minister of Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, was indignant "that a sports journalist takes advantage of his notoriety and live to carry out a sexual assault and then claim the lack of humor of his victims to legitimize his acts ".

Contacted by AFP, Marie Portolano declined to comment.

She tweeted on Sunday: "The essential thing is the voice of women which has been fully respected by Canal +. Please do not forget it".

© 2021 AFP