It’s been five years since the French satirical newspaper Canard enchaîné overthrown a potential president. François Fillon, then the French Republican presidential candidate, was long considered the favorite of the election – until the canard revealed that Fillon had bogusly employed his wife. A few more unsightly details and investigations by the judiciary followed. In the end, the Republican was eliminated in the first ballot, and Emmanuel Macron became president.
Now it is of all people who was not only celebrated for his investigative journalism at the time canard, who has been criticized for a bogus employment affair. An employee has sued the newspaper because the girlfriend of an artist is said to have received money for 24 years without ever actually working for the newspaper. Apparently, it should be about a sum of three million euros. Incidentally, the employee who filed the lawsuit was part of the research team that uncovered the François Fillon scandal five years ago.
Canard enchaîné means “chained duck”, the title alludes to censorship in the founding year 1915
The whole thing hits him Canard enchaîné difficult. After all, it was he who scoffed at the transgressions of others. The newspaper is, this word can really be used in this case, an institution in France. Canard enchaîné means “chained duck” in German, a duck is also a newspaper in colloquial French, the chain alludes to the censorship in the founding year 1915. The weekly newspaper appears every Wednesday, the layout has changed only slightly over the past hundred years. Text and drawings alternate on the pages. There are a few red headings on the first and last page, the rest is black and white.
The newspaper is considered to be politically and economically independent and completely dispenses with advertising. Her mix of satire and investigative research is quite unique in the French newspaper market – and not only there. Since its inception, the Canard enchaîné quite a few politicians were overthrown and scandals uncovered. For example, how a state secretary bought cigars from Nicolas Sarkozy for 12,000 euros at the taxpayer’s expense. Or how President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had diamonds worth one million francs given to him by a Central African dictator in the 1970s.
At the end of August, the newspaper reacted to the allegations on the front page – in the usual style
So now the authorities are investigating Canard enchaîné itself. In the summer, the Paris public prosecutor’s office launched a preliminary investigation and has since been interrogating the members of the editorial team. Some of them also speak out, mostly anonymously, in other French media. For example, you say that the draftsman André Escaro had a special status. The 94-year-old has been working for the for over 40 years canard. He also sat on the newspaper’s board of directors until June of that year.
At the end of August, the newspaper itself responded to the allegations for the first time, with a statement from its board of directors on the front page. The caricature is classic Canard echaîné, it shows a woman leafing through a newspaper with white pages. “It’s a fake newspaper,” says the man next to her. “Of the canard reinvents itself”, it reads below.
The text of the statement is less self-deprecating. The comparison sought by many media with the scandal surrounding Fillon’s wife is not justified, it says, among other things. The newspaper hired Escaro’s partner to convince the artist to continue working for the newspaper after retirement. Escaro and his wife worked together, she looked for information in the press, on the basis of which he was then able to draw. Shortly after the statement was published, 14 employees of the newspaper distanced themselves from the text. Escaro’s wife was not known to the editorial staff, they wrote in a reply.
“Our newspaper may be run by old people, but it’s run well,” says the editor
one asks at Canard enchaîné an interview about the bogus employment affair, the editor Nicolas Brimo calls back a short time later. “There is no bogus employment here,” he says. He had nothing to add to the Board of Directors’ opinion. “That’s what we think and what we have to say on the matter.” But then he says a little more.
Because the criticism that many employees are now leveling at the newspaper not only has to do with the bogus employment affair, but also with the general working atmosphere in the company. Of the canard corresponds to an editorial office from the fifties or sixties, becomes a voice from the editors in the newspaper Le Monde quoted. The veteran bosses are afraid of hiring new people and losing their influence, another.
“Our newspaper may be run by old people, but it’s run well,” says Nicolas Brimo. In fact, the head of the publishing house, Michel Gaillard, is 78 years old, and the two editors-in-chief are 73 and 59, respectively. Publisher Brimo, 71, says: “You need a certain amount of experience, especially in managerial positions, to work for us.” He also doesn’t really see a problem in the fact that only seven of the 23 permanent editorial staff are women. “We have about the same proportion of women as the French parliament.”
What even Brimo cannot joke away: The printed edition of the Canard enchaîné has fallen significantly in recent years, from around 500,000 in 2011 to around 280,000 in 2021. An online version of the newspaper has been available for subscription for just two years, and there is no other digital content. The main competition comes from the internet: the online portal media partwhich is financed by subscribers, has repeatedly attracted attention with revelations in recent years.
“The digital is really a problem, because we have a hard time as a weekly newspaper,” says canardEditor Nicolas Brimo. Since the summer, attempts have therefore been made to help with digitization workshops, for example. We are also working on hiring new people. When asked whether the newspaper was also specifically trying to rejuvenate the editorial team, he replied: “What does that even mean, rejuvenation? It happens all by itself. We don’t live forever.”