Nupes-LFI deputies Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière demanded on Thursday the dismissal of a journalist from the Pointwho had accused them the day before in an article of having exploited an undocumented cleaning lady, an article finally withdrawn for “errors and shortcomings”, according to the editor.
“The additional checks that we have carried out have revealed to us that errors and breaches of caution have been made”, in the writing of the article, which has been withdrawn, the editor-in-chief of Point explained in a tweet on Thursday. Etienne Gernelle, who apologized to the two concerned.
According to the Point article, which was based in particular on alleged exchanges by SMS between the housekeeper and Raquel Garrido, SMS which turned out to be false, the couple was accused of abusing an Algerian housekeeper without papers.
“I won’t stop there. (…) The damage caused is indelible”
Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière, who had firmly denied all the allegations in the article, immediately reacted to Twitter apologies from the editor. “I demand the immediate dismissal” of the journalist who wrote the article. “I won’t stop there. (…) My family has suffered too much. The harm caused is indelible, ”wrote Raquel Garrido, just elected deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis against the president of the UDI Jean-Christophe Lagarde.
Alexis Corbière, also elected in Seine-Saint-Denis, agreed: “the editor-in-chief apologizes to us and withdraws the article. That is. But it cannot stop there,” he said, believing that “it is the honor of the profession that is at stake and the trust that citizens place in the press. Sanctions must be imposed”.
The couple’s lawyer is preparing two complaints
Social networks, especially on the far right, were unleashed against the couple as soon as the article was published. The couple’s lawyer, Me Xavier Sauvignet, indicated that he was preparing two complaints, one for public defamation and another against X for forgery and use of forgery and identity theft. The leader of the rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon got involved on Thursday: “The slanderers of Corbière and Garrido admit their falsehood. They would do well to question themselves on the slope they have taken and the reasons for which they use such informants”.
And the rebellious MP for Paris Danielle Obono stressed that “the infamous lie has already spread more massively than the truth will. The damage is done, as wanted by the instigator, the fachosphere and their allies under macronist minions ”.