THOMAS COEX via AFP
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POLITICS – Organized on Wednesday April 20 at 9 p.m., four days before the second round, the debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will be presented by journalists Léa Salamé and Gilles Bouleau.
As is customary for this traditional meeting since the 1974 election, these names were the subject of an agreement between TF1 and France 2, and the campaign teams.
But within France Télévisions, some believe that this choice would not necessarily have been the same if the candidates had not been consulted. At the center of the questions, the presenter of the 8 p.m. of France 2, Anne-Sophie Lapix.
A position that Jordan Bardella, acting president of the RN, has publicly assumed. “Marine Le Pen does not want Anne-Sophie Lapix to lead the debate” because the journalist “cannot hide her hostility”, he said on CNews on Monday.
“Courageous and upright woman”
Interviewed in The Parisian of this Saturday, April 16, Léa Salamé and Gilles Bouleau wanted to defend the work of their colleague. On a possible “hostility”, the TF1 journalist did not “perceive it in the interviews that Anne-Sophie carried out”. “Let (Bardella, ndlr) have an opinion, OK. But that he declares it publicly, I find that a little more disturbing. In a face-to-face, politicians do not choose their interlocutors or the questions, but they are free to answer”, he continues.
Salamé also says she is “embarrassed”. “It’s not up to politicians to give journalists a good or a bad point on a TV set,” she recalls. “As for Anne-Sophie, I had a great pleasure working with her on ‘Élysée 2022’. She put herself in danger by agreeing to participate in this political program when she was not obliged to. In addition to being an excellent journalist, she is a courageous and upright woman”, assures the journalist from France 2.
Léa Salamé also takes the opportunity to explain that politicians have the choice of refusing a journalist – “like Anne-Claire Coudray was five years ago, like Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and Anne Sinclair in 1995” , they do not choose those who question them during the debate. “Does this rule need to change? No doubt,” she concludes.
See also on The HuffPost: All those times Anne-Sophie Lapix did her job in the face of politics
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