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The English writer G. K. Chesterton pointed out that journalism consisted mainly of saying "Lord Jones died" to people who never knew he was alive. Keeping this definition in mind, and with all the respect I owe to his family and friends, Pierre Péan is dead.
Pierre Péan was a French investigative journalist. He spent years researching his subjects, and then published his book findings, one book every three or four years.
He died yesterday at the age of 81.
I will hasten to add that he would immediately reject the qualification of "investigative reporter", insisting that he was leaving the investigative work to the professionals qualified police, while he was simply investigating people and situations that intrigued him.
His masterpiece is probably the book he published in 1994 on François Mitterrand, then President of the French Republic. Péan avoids the subtleties of the biographer and chooses to focus on Mitterrand between 1934 and 1947, during which time the socialist leader went from working for the right-wing collaborationist government of Marshal Philippe Pétain to an active resistance against the invaders. Nazis. .
Pierre Péan has always chosen the main objectives, whatever their political orientation. . . Right-wing president Jacques Chirac and populist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen were also treated.
Diamonds are the best friends of a girl
Pean began his career as a ministerial advisor in Gabon before moving on to journalism. His first major scoop appeared in the satirical weekly The chained Duck in 1979, it concerned the ransom of the president of diamonds that the Central African Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokbada could have given to the holder of the first French post, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The revelations did nothing to help Giscard get re-elected two years later.
Exceptionally in the closed world of French media, Péan has had the weight and courage to badume some of the biggest names in the sector, highlighting the functioning and badociations of the private TV channel TF1, and shaking the super self-satisfied journalists at the centrist daily The world.
Pierre Péan also wrote on Africa, particularly in 1983, on the troubled relations between France and Gabon and on a 2005 volume on the Rwandan genocide with significant title. Black anger, white lies. Perhaps the greatest eulogy that can be made about this book is that it was condemned almost equally by Hutus, Tutsis, French, Belgians and almost all those who are interested in the tragedy of 1994.
The dilemma of modern journalists
Pierre Péan considered that the contemporary journalist was faced with a difficult dilemma, linked to the fact that the press had become an almost parallel tribunal, without the same legal guarantees as the courts.
He liked to point out that in the original Declaration of Human Rights of 1789, the presumption of innocence was the ninth article. The freedom of the press followed in Article 11. He felt that we lived at a time when this order had been reversed. And that such an inversion is bad news for democracy, for justice and, ultimately, for truth.
Contemporary journalists who wait for the whistle-blowers to give them their next scoop have deserved the deepest contempt of Péan. "These are the pawns of the powerful," said Péan Le Figaro in an interview, adding that writers may be used by those seeking revenge or who develop a complex judicial strategy.
And the secret of a successful journalistic investigation? Just take your time.
Contemporary publishers, forced to attract more readers with fewer journalists, will not like the sound of that. But Pean was categorical: his success was based on his ability to reinvest the profits made on a book in the search for the next. Journalists today simply do not have enough time.
He also warned that we could go too far in our requests for access to all kinds of information. There are secrets that a state must be allowed to protect. According to Pierre Péan, the requirement of absolute transparency is in itself a form of dictatorship. Journalists must also respect the law.
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