France: censorship came here, too

PutinandBerlusconi Sometimes there are news that might almost cheer us on the independence of Italian journalism. Except that Italy, unfortunately, in some way is also involved with censorship abroad. A few days ago it was learned that the French newspaper France Soir would have fired its journalist from Rome and Moscow because they have criticized too much the political power of these countries. The journalists, according to the newspaper Le Monde that interviewed them, would have been too critical of Putin and Berlusconi.

France Soir is not an ordinary newspaper. It was born in 1944 by Pierre Lazareff, and after only twenty years from its birth had reached one million copies sold. Then it suffers a meltdown in 2005 when he arrived at just 45,000 copies sold. So the newspaper has begun to focus on sensationalism to sell more copies and in early February of 2006, it published a series of caricatures of Mohammed from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The cartoons had already received many criticisms in Denmark and in France they had the same outcomes, leading to the dismissal of the director, Jacques Lefranc, and to a new course for the newspaper. Since 2009, the newspaper was taken over by Alexandre Pougatchev. Not an ordinary person, but the son of Russian oligarchy Serguei Pougatchev and personal friend of Vladimir Putin. So, the downsizing and censorship started to land in French territory.
As the newspaper Le Monde writes, the newspaper France Soir has just fired its two foreign correspondent in Rome and Moscow without regard. Writing critiques on what happens does not seem to be a task of foreign correspondents. Ariel Dumont, working from Rome, was notified by telephone (on November 13) the end of her collaboration. And Dumont had already self-censored to keep working. From the central editorial office, as she explains in an interview, they had repeatedly criticized her 'antiberlusconismo' (way of thinking against Berlusconi). So the freelance had begun to be very cautious in her articles. "I used a periphrasis to talk about his love affairs, such as: 'the disorganized Berlusconi's private life'. In September, they made me re-write an article about the film festival in Venice, where I spoke about the movie 'Videocracy'". Then, they started not to asking me for some collaborations, until nothing at all. The same thing for Nathalia Ouvaroff, foreign correspondent in Moscow, who since 2006 was a correspondent for France-Soir. After they had denied all the pieces she wrote about political matters, she has been accused of being "too critical" against Putin, and she was hijacked on social issues. But even the essays on the prisons or psychiatric hospitals were refused, "maybe they were not quite positive," says the Ouvaroff to Le Monde.
So now, the Russian and Italian censorship seems to have made two new victims, who at this moment, won't enjoy the compensation because the newspaper says that "occasionally we still use their collaboration".
So the hard times for the press freedom in the world seem to be a constant, now, of the twenty-first century.