(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has criticised a legal investigation opened against journalist Judith Silberfeld for “public abuse of a member of government”. Silberfeld is deputy editor-in-chief of the monthly gay magazine “Têtu”. The organisation described the legal action as “completely absurd and anachronistic.” “It is all the more ridiculous as it comes at a time when […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has criticised a legal investigation opened against journalist Judith Silberfeld for “public abuse of a member of government”. Silberfeld is deputy editor-in-chief of the monthly gay magazine “Têtu”. The organisation described the legal action as “completely absurd and anachronistic.”
“It is all the more ridiculous as it comes at a time when France has just done away with the offence of ‘insulting a foreign head of state’, one of the most archaic clauses in the press law,” the organisation said.
In an article published on 12 December 2002, the daily “Libération” quoted Deputy Minister for the Family Christian Jacob, known for his opposition to the Civil Solidarity Pact (Pacte civil de solidarité, PACS, a law offering the possibility for unmarried couples – both heterosexual and homosexual – to acquire a legal status) and to child adoption by homosexuals. In the article, Jacob was quoted as saying, “The term ‘new family’ is not intended to mean ‘to be born as a result of an orgy’, as I have heard on television.”
On 19 December, Silberfeld received an e-mail that appeared to have been sent by the minister’s public relations adviser, Antoine Rault. The message said that the quote had been taken out of context and that the minister spent “a lot of time studying the media and television, the running of which he understood very little about”.
The journalist from “Têtu”, a “monthly for homosexuals of both sexes”, published the contents of the e-mail, which she believed to be genuine, on the magazine’s Internet site. A few hours later Rault, contacted by Silberfeld, said the e-mail had not come from his office. The journalist said the minister’s adviser had “seen the funny side of the situation.” She immediately removed the item from the magazine’s website and published a correction in which she said she had been the victim of a “clever hoax.”
On 8 January 2004, more than one year later, Silberfeld was summoned before a Paris court. She was told by the examining magistrate that she was being investigated for “public abuse,” on the basis that she had used “expressions suggesting that the deputy minister for the family did not have the intelligence that should be expected for someone in his position”. The minister himself said he had filed a “complaint for defamation against an unknown person or persons” in late 2002.
