What is the “Widow” the name of? Is it an allusion to the guillotine, like thementioned a group of doctors and Internet users reacting to a column published on the site of France Evening in 2021? Or is it an allusion to the widows of the Covid-19, as we could read it on the site of France Evening a few hours after the publication of the tribune?
It is a “metaphor”, explained Thursday Xavier Azalbert to the judges of the 17th chamber of the Paris court. The publication director of the site who was pinned for having relayed unfounded information came to give his version of the facts in the lawsuit he brought for defamation against the emergency doctor Mathias Wargon*. Pressed by a judge to clarify the meaning of this metaphor, the entrepreneur replies: “I come from the business world. Very often, in a company, we say that heads will roll. He recalls that the sentence is preceded by “a trial will have to be held”. It is not written that “a trial was held”, he defends himself. ” France Evening is a small media, how can we attribute to this media the intention to restore the death penalty in France? “, he pleads. Xavier Azalbert says he assumes the publication of this text, which he describes as a “firefight” during the hearing.
“What I read is not clean”
This long text, published on the site of France Evening on August 22, 2021, had been the subject of a broadcast on BFMTV on September 2. Mathias Wargon, head of emergencies at the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis, had been invited to debate with Xavier Azalbert in polo news. He criticizes the doctor for seven remarks made during the program, including these “oh yeah, the article is good, he takes us a bit for idiots, Mr. Azalbert, but he is good”. “And the end, and the end all the same […] because there are things that are a little disgusting, […] there is a sentence that no one has noted but I took your text, I did some text analysis, it’s filthy. »
“I was shocked by some sentences [de la tribune] “, explains to the judges Mathias Wargon, known for his outspokenness and who denounced a “gag trial”. “My opinion is that what I read is not clean. We don’t write things like that. “The doctor, who is not named in the gallery unlike some health professionals, says he went to the show “to defend his colleagues”.
A large part of the audience is devoted to the context of 2021. At the time, the vaccination campaign, which began in December 2020, is defended by doctors on social networks, while sites, including France Evening, defend the use of molecules like hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19. The context is tense. “I have patients who arrive at the emergency room who think they are protected by hydroxychloroquine, azythromycin, ivermectin and who are not vaccinated, recalls Mathias Wargon. People take that, they arrive at the emergency room and they have significant damage from Covid-19. We have people who do not get vaccinated and who die of Covid-19 in 2021. ” The doctor remembers having attended a “noria” of helicopters between the Antilles and Île-de-France “with intubated people”. “That’s the reality of misinformation,” he says.
A bullet received in the hospital
Cited as a witness by the defense of Mathias Wargon, Stéphane Gaudry joins him in a punchline: “When you misinform about the pyramids of Egypt, it has few consequences, when you misinform about vaccines, there are victims, I have seen in my department. “ The professor of intensive medicine-resuscitation launches at the bar an appeal to remember the families of the dead of Covid-19.
Mathias Wargon also reports anonymous threats he has received: a bullet at his workplace, an envelope with powder at his home. “The hospital received emails referring to me as Josef Mengele [médecin nazi qui mena des expérimentations sur des déportés à Auschwitz]. I have family who fell victim to the Nazis, it’s always weird to be compared to that. He no longer publishes photos of his team in order to protect them, he adds. Active on Twitter, he says he must have made “hundreds of reports on Pharos”. “Pictures of hanged people, of guillotine under my account is a reality. »
“I have always asked for the debate”
The debates then center on the site France Evening. ” I noted that France Evening had become the epicenter of a Covid-skeptical galaxy, ”says Raphael Grably, journalist for BFMTV and the second witness cited by the defense of Mathias Wargon, masters Tiphaine Mary and Laura Ben Kemoun. No witnesses were called for Xavier Azalbert. The journalist recalls that France Evening calls for donations tax-exempt on its site.
At the helm, Xavier Azalbert assures him: his job “is to inform, not to judge”. ” France Evening is a medium that brings a certain form of contradiction, he believes. I have always asked for debate, debate in science. You have to give the floor to whoever has the most improbable hypothesis because you never know. »
“It would be dangerous to limit freedom of expression to the most commonly accepted ideas”, argues Jean-Charles Teissedre, Xavier Azalbert’s lawyer, in the absence of his client, who left the hearing at the time of pleadings. He assures that ” France Evening is a nuanced site, France Evening is not an antivax site”. Describing Mathias Wargon as an “arsonist firefighter”, “it is not surprising that he receives threats”, he adds.
For the prosecutor, the facts of defamation are not qualified. “The national pole for the fight against online hatred has been seized of many times threats against doctors,” she recalls. She evokes a platform “whose words are virulent” and the context of a program, polo news“which wants to be controversial by the format”.
Xavier Azalbert is claiming 15,000 euros from Mathias Wargon in compensation for the moral damage suffered. The judgment was reserved. It will be returned on June 16.
* Xavier Azalbert is also attacking the company NextInteractive and its director Arthur Dreyfuss, for having posted the replay of the program containing the disputed remarks online.